Provisional University Bulletin (2026-2027)

• Minor
• Major (BA)

International and Global Studies (IGS) is an interdisciplinary program that provides students with an opportunity to understand the complex processes of globalization that have so profoundly affected politics, economics, culture, society, the environment, and many other facets of our lives. After a set of four foundational courses (a gateway introductory survey and three core courses), students take a required junior seminar course plus five additional elective courses within one of the program’s three concentrations: International Order, Global Cultures and Societies, or Law Justice and Human Rights. To gain a deeper understanding of other cultures, IGS majors take one additional language course (beyond the university requirement) and complete either study abroad or an international internship (or, if preferred, some combination of the two). The IGS program thus combines a set of rigorous foundational courses from across the social sciences, an opportunity to delve into the intricacies of a topic within the subject of globalization, and a combination of superior language skills and international residency (study or work) for academic and experiential learning and preparation for a globally oriented career.

Students in the International and Global Studies program at Brandeis University develop a broad and comparative perspective on contemporary world affairs. In service of that understanding students learn to use a variety of tools drawn from different academic disciplines and direct cultural experience to give them a strong foundation that will allow them to operate in a transcultural field. They also learn to use these tools together to shape their own rich and integrated perspectives on complex global issues.

IGS students learn to:

• Understand other ways of life and perspectives.
• Appreciate how different societies operate from cultural, social, and political perspectives.
• Distinguish between challenges that affect a wide range of societies (e.g. poverty) and those that are particular to the societies they study.
• Understand how the international political and economic order is structured, appreciating both its historical roots and the contemporary challenges posed by the emergence of new great powers;
• Understand how core value systems around the world, such as sources of social and political legitimacy and status and aesthetic and moral judgments, prompt the need for differing responses to similar problems
• Engage with diverse individuals, organizations, and communities with respect for different values, beliefs, and practices
• Apply multi-disciplinary perspectives to identify and critically analyze contemporary global challenges
• Understand the practical means, such as commerce, education, and public health, by which different societies sustain and nurture life and society.

To help achieve these goals, IGS students:

• Learn to speak, read, and write a language other than their own with sufficient ability to understand the debate and discussion within societies that use that language;
• Pursue an international experience, preferably in a country in which their second language is used;
• Identify connections between what is learned in the classroom and what is experienced in a foreign country.

Students who wish to major or minor in International and Global Studies should meet with the undergraduate advising head to discuss the various concentrations within the major and select the one that most aligns with their interests. Students majoring in IGS must focus their studies in one of the following concentrations: 

International Order: International Order is the study of the international system, especially institutions of politics and economics, and how these systems are responding to changes in the global distribution of wealth and power.

An International Order Concentration may lead students to careers in business, diplomacy, journalism, or any other field in which a knowledge of how the world’s institutions work is useful.

Global Cultures and Societies: Students concentrating in Global Cultures and Societies will learn about issues arising from cross-cultural encounters around the world. Through the concentration, students will be able to explore cultural phenomena from differing angles in the arts and science. This multidisciplinary approach will help students understand how these cultural products (e.g., literature, film, media, and the arts) develop within their unique social and political contexts. Students choosing this concentration will focus on courses in language and literature as well as in anthropology, art history, film, history, music, religious studies, and women, gender, and sexuality studies. 

A Global Cultures and Societies concentration may lead students to careers in journalism, media and art, museum studies, and film. It is also useful for students interested in careers working with an international NGO or even international business and law.

Law, Justice, and Human Rights: Law, Justice, and Human Rights is the study of concepts of justice and how nation-states can cooperate to pursue them. Major topics will include comparison of legal and ethical traditions, the rights of migrants and refugees, as well as sex and gender rights.

A Law, Justice, and Human Rights concentration may lead students to careers in the law, international advocacy, management consulting, and other fields where experience handling complex social issues is vital.

Students should take IGS 10a (Introduction to International and Global Studies) during their first or second year. This course provides a systematic introduction to the key issues of contemporary global change. In addition, students must take three core courses in the disciplines of anthropology (ANTH 1a Introduction to the Comparative Study of Human Societies), economics (ECON 28b The Global Economy or IGS 8a Economic Principles and Globalization), and politics (POL 15a Introduction to International Relations). Ideally, students should complete these four foundational courses by the end of the sophomore year.

IGS Program Administration

Elanah Uretsky, Program Chair
Associate Professor of International and Global Studies

Lucy Goodhart, Senior Thesis Advisor
Lecturer in International and Global Studies and Politics

Kristen Lucken, Study Abroad Internship Coordinator
Lecturer in Sociology, International and Global Studies, and Religious Studies

Chandler Rosenberger, Undergraduate Advising Head and Study Abroad Liaison
Associate Professor of International and Global Studies and Sociology

Avinash Singh
Assistant Professor in International and Global Studies Program and History

IGS Affiliated Faculty

Kerry A. Chase
Associate Professor of Politics

Clémentine Faure-Bellaiche
Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies

Gregory Freeze
Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of History

Hannah Weiss Muller
Associate Professor of History

Michael Randall
Professor of French and Comparative Literature

Fernando Rosenberg
Professor of Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature

Pu Wang
Helaine and Alvin Allen Chair in Literature

Steven Wilson
Assistant Professor of Politics

Successful completion of six courses are required for the minor:

1. Gateway course: IGS 10a (Introduction to International and Global Studies)
2. Three additional core courses: ANTH 1a (Introduction to the Comparative Study of Human Societies), ECON 28b (The Global Economy) or IGS 8a (Economic Principles and Globalization), and POL 15a (Introduction to International Relations).
3. Electives: Two courses from any of the listed IGS electives.
4. No more than three of these courses may count toward another minor.
5. Minimum grade: All Brandeis courses used to fulfill the requirements of the IGS minor must be taken for a letter grade (not pass/fail) and must be C or above.

Successful completion of ten courses are required for the major:

1. Gateway course: IGS 10a (Introduction to International and Global Studies).
2. Three additional core courses: ANTH 1a (Introduction to the Comparative Study of Human Societies); ECON 28b (The Global Economy) or IGS 8a (Economic Principles and Globalization); and POL 15a (Introduction to International Relations).
3. One IGS Seminar Course that corresponds with the chosen concentration
   • IGS 104a Seminar in International Order
   • IGS 106b Seminar in Global Cultures and Societies
   • IGS 108a Seminar in Law, Justice, and Human Rights
4. Electives: Five additional courses, all chosen from one of the following areas of focus:
   
   • International Order
   • Global Cultures and Societies
   • Law, Justice, and Human Rights
5. Auxiliary language: Completion of a fourth-semester course in a modern foreign language. The requirement may be fulfilled by enrolling in language courses at Brandeis or elsewhere, or by providing other evidence of proficiency, such as coursework offered in that language.
6. International experience: Can be fulfilled either through semester-long study abroad program (during the academic year) approved by Brandeis’s Study Abroad Office and the IGS International Experience Liaison or through an internship, approved by the IGS International Experience Liaison, with an internationally facing organization. If fulfilling the requirement with a study abroad program, may count up to two courses abroad toward the IGS major. Language courses cannot count toward the IGS electives. If fulfilling the requirement with an internship, it must include at least one hundred hours over at least six weeks and must be at an organization concerned with the central issues of the IGS major. If extended international residence would be a hardship, IGS students may petition the IGS internship coordinator to undertake a U.S.-based internship directly involved in international and global issues. Students meeting this requirement with an international or domestic internship must receive permission of the IGS internship coordinator prior to starting the internship.
7. Foundational Literacies: As part of completing the International and Global Studies major, students must:
   • Fulfill the writing intensive requirement by successfully completing one of the following: Any IGS elective course approved for WI. The program’s Junior Seminars are all WI courses.  
   • Fulfill the oral communication requirement by successfully completing one of the following: Any IGS elective course approved for OC.
   • Fulfill the digital literacy requirement by successfully completing: IGS 10a.
8. Senior Thesis (optional): Exceptional students interested in completing an honors thesis as seniors should apply to the honors coordinator, preferably in the spring of their junior year.  Thesis students must have a minimum GPA of 3.5 in the courses counted toward the IGS major, and be engaged on a thesis project closely tied to IGS themes (as determined by the IGS honors coordinator). The student's primary thesis adviser should be an IGS faculty member -- any faculty member who teaches an IGS or IGS cross-listed course. The examining committee for the thesis must include at least two other faculty members, at least one of whom teaches an IGS or IGS cross-listed course. Thesis students will register for IGS 99d (a full-year course) with the thesis adviser. One semester of IGS 99d may count as one of the six required IGS electives (see requirement C above). IGS departmental honors are based on the examining committee's evaluation of the completed thesis and the record in courses for the IGS major.

9. No more than three electives from any one department will be counted toward the major.

10. Minimum Grade: All Brandeis courses used to fulfill the requirements of the IGS major must be taken for a letter grade (not pass/fail) and must be C or above.

IGS 8a Economic Principles and Globalization
[ qr ss ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took ECON 28b or ECON 8b in prior years or taken concurrently with ECON 28b.

An introduction to basic economic principles needed to understand the causes and economic effects of increased international flows of goods, people, firms, and money. Attention paid to international economic institutions (World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank), strategies for economic development, and globalization controversies. Usually offered every year.

IGS 10a Introduction to International and Global Studies
[ djw dl ss ]

"Globalization" touches us more every day. Introduces the challenges of globalization to national and international governance, economic success, individual and group identities, cultural diversity, the environment, and inequalities within and between nations, regions of the globe, gender, and race. Usually offered every year.

IGS 92a Global Studies Internship

This course is offered only for non-IGS majors, or for IGS majors engaged in approved credit-bearing internships who have been exempted from IGS 89b. Signature of the IGS internship coordinator is required. Usually offered every year.

IGS 97a Senior Essay

Usually offered every year.

IGS 98a Independent Study

Usually offered every year.

IGS 98b Independent Study

Yields half-course credit. Usually offered every year.

IGS 99d Senior Research

Seniors who are candidates for degrees with honors in IGS must register for this course and, under the direction of a faculty member, prepare an honors thesis on a suitable topic. Usually offered every year.

IGS 104a Seminar in International Order
[ oc ss wi ]

Prerequisites: IGS 8a and IGS 10A recommended.

Critically appraises the institutions known as the “international order.” We examine threats to this order and consider how it may evolve or erode with the renewed influence of rising powers and perturbations to the balance of power. Our interaction with the scholarly debate is interspersed with sessions on research methods to enable students to conduct research on related topics. Usually offered every year.

IGS 108a Seminar in Law, Justice, and Human Rights
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Explores international justice and human rights regimes along with concepts and prominent theories that inform the field. We examine specific cases carried out in different national settings and critique the utility and efficacy of international human rights institutions. Usually offered every year.

IGS 110a Religion and Secularism in French & Francophone Culture
[ hum ss ]

Tackles the persistent power of religion in France and its former colonies despite common ideals of secular nationalism. Through literature and film we will study the historical and contemporary cultural wars waged around the French notion of 'laïcité' -- its confrontation with Islam, but also the experiences of Jews, Catholics, and Protestants.

IGS 130a Crossing Borders: Mobility and Displacement in a Global Age
[ ss ]

Introduces students to the social, cultural, religious, political, and economic forces that shape global migration today. We follow migration flows across borders and assess their implications for the migrant, the state, and the global economy. Case studies include refugees and asylees whose rights are protected by international law. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 136b Contemporary Chinese Society and Culture
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Introduces students to contemporary Chinese society, with a focus on the rapid transformations that have taken place during the post-Mao era with a focus on family, gender, sexuality, migration, ethnicity, and family planning. Usually offered every third year.

IGS 138a China in the World
[ djw ss wi ]

This course examines China's role on the world stage. Looking at the history of China's interaction with the world, both at home and abroad, we will examine how China has affected, and been affected by, other societies and cultures. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 140a Styles of Globalization
[ ss wi ]

Why do some countries benefit from globalization while others lag behind? How do different nations balance issues such as free trade, foreign investment, and workers' rights? This course considers the real-world choices behind success and failure in the global economy. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 165a Revolution, Religion, and Terror: Postcolonial Histories
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Examines religious conflict, revolutionary violence, and civil war in modern South Asia. It looks at Jihad, Maoist militancy, rising fundamentalism, and political violence. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 171a The Asian Wave: Global Pop Culture and its Histories
[ djw ss ]

Asia is not only remaking itself but also exporting images and ideas across the world. This course explores how Asian pop culture shapes global modernity, as countries project their values and aspirations to a global audience through increasing connectivity. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 173a Asian Gangsters: Contemporary Crime Cinema
[ djw dl ss ]

Studies contemporary crime films to examine modern Asian society and politics. Drawing upon film theory, cultural studies, historical and sociological research, this class considers the world's largest media market to understand the continent's rapidly changing socio-political milieu. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 175a Digital Asia: Democracy in the Internet Age
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Analyzes the transformative potential of the internet as an agent of development and as a mechanism for disrupting social and political orders in Asia, home to the world's largest democracy and also the world's largest authoritarian regime. Usually offered every second year.

IGS/LGLS 128b Networks of Global Justice
[ ss ]

Examines how global justice is actively shaped by dynamic institutions, contested ideas, and evolving cultures. Using liberal arts methods, the course explores prospects for advancing peace and justice in a complex world. It is organized around case studies of humanitarian crises, involving health, poverty, migration, and peace-building across nations. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 1a Introduction to the Comparative Study of Human Societies
[ djw nw ss ]

Examines the ways human beings construct their lives in a variety of societies. Includes the study of the concept of culture, kinship, and social organization, political economy, gender and sexuality, religion and ritual, symbols and language, social inequalities and social change, and globalization. Consideration of anthropological research methods and approaches to cross-cultural analysis. Usually offered every semester.

ECON 28b The Global Economy
[ ss wi ]

Prerequisites: ECON 2a or ECON 10a and ECON 20a. ECON 20a may be taken concurrently with ECON 28b.

Applies the basic tools and models of economic analysis to a wide range of topics in international economics. Usually offered every semester.

IGS 8a Economic Principles and Globalization
[ qr ss ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took ECON 28b or ECON 8b in prior years or taken concurrently with ECON 28b.

An introduction to basic economic principles needed to understand the causes and economic effects of increased international flows of goods, people, firms, and money. Attention paid to international economic institutions (World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank), strategies for economic development, and globalization controversies. Usually offered every year.

IGS 10a Introduction to International and Global Studies
[ djw dl ss ]

"Globalization" touches us more every day. Introduces the challenges of globalization to national and international governance, economic success, individual and group identities, cultural diversity, the environment, and inequalities within and between nations, regions of the globe, gender, and race. Usually offered every year.

POL 15a Introduction to International Relations
[ ss ]

Open to first-year students.

General introduction to international politics, emphasizing the essential characteristics of the international system as a basis for understanding how states behave and interact. Analysis of causes of war, conditions of peace, international conflict and cooperation, the purposes and functions of international institutions, and pressing issues in international politics today.

AAAS 125b Caribbean Women and Globalization: Sexuality, Citizenship, Work
[ ss wi ]

Utilizing perspectives from sociology, anthropology, fiction, and music to examine the relationship between women's sexuality and conceptions of labor, citizenship, and sovereignty. The course considers these alongside conceptions of masculinity, contending feminisms, and the global perspective. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 30b American Environmental History
[ ss wi ]

Provides an overview of the relationship between nature and culture in North America. Covers Native Americans, the European invasion, the development of a market system of resource extraction and consumption, the impact of industrialization, and environmentalist responses. Current environmental issues are placed in historical context. Usually offered every year.

AMST 106b Food and Farming in America
[ ss wi ]

Yields four semester-hour credits towards rate of work and graduation.

American food is abundant and cheap. Yet many eat poorly, and some argue that our agriculture may be unhealthy and unsustainable. Explores the history of American farming and diet and the prospects for a healthy food system. Includes extensive fieldwork. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 140a Human Rights in Global Perspective
[ djw ss wi ]

Explores a range of debates about human rights as a concept as well as the practice of human rights work. The human rights movement seeks the recognition of universal norms that transcend political and cultural difference while anthropology seeks to explore and analyze the great diversity of human life. To what extent can these two goals--advocating for universal norms and respecting cultural difference--be reconciled? The course examines cases from various parts of the world concerning: indigenous peoples, environment, health, gender, genocide/violence/nation-states and globalization. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 144a The Anthropology of Gender
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Anthropology majors have priority for enrollment.

Explores gender, sexuality, and cultural systems from a comparative perspective. Topics may include rituals of masculinity and femininity, the vexing question of the universality of women's subordination, culturally-specific classifications of sexual orientation and gender identity, transnational feminisms, sex work, migrant labor, reproductive rights, and much more. Usually offered every year.

ECON 28b The Global Economy
[ ss wi ]

Prerequisites: ECON 2a or ECON 10a and ECON 20a. ECON 20a may be taken concurrently with ECON 28b.

Applies the basic tools and models of economic analysis to a wide range of topics in international economics. Usually offered every semester.

ECON 65b Governance, Bureaucracy, and Economic Development
[ djw ss wi ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a.

Analyzes the role of institutions, governance, and bureaucracy in economic development. Topics include transaction costs, role of institutions, governance performance indicators, causes and consequences of corruption, anti-corruption policies, principal-agent theory and bureaucratic behavior. The course also includes a detailed case study on the role of governance and bureaucratic reforms in China's economic success since 1980. Usually offered every second year.

ECON 122b The Economics of the Middle East
[ nw ss wi ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a or the equivalent. Does not count toward the upper-level elective requirement for the major in economics.

Examines the Middle East economies ' past experiences, present situation, and future challenges ' drawing on theories, policy formulations and empirical studies of economic growth, trade, poverty, income distribution, labor markets, finance and banking, government reforms, globalization, and Arab-Israeli political economy. Usually offered every year.

ECON 172b Money and Banking
[ ss wi ]

Prerequisites: ECON 82b and ECON 83a or permission of the instructor.

Examines the relationship of the financial system to real economic activity, focusing especially on banks and central banks. Topics include the monetary and payments systems; financial instruments and their pricing; the structure, management, and regulation of bank and nonbank financial intermediaries; and the design and operations of central banks in a modern economy. Usually offered every year.

ECON 175a Introduction to the Economics of Development
[ djw ss wi ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a or permission of the instructor. Does not count toward the upper-level elective requirement for the major in economics.

An introduction to various models of economic growth and development and evaluation of these perspectives from the experience of developing and industrial countries. Usually offered every second year.

ENVS 112b Governing the Environmental Commons
[ deis-us djw ss wi ]

Introduction to the diverse meanings, forms, and claims about commons; theories and debates about sustainable governance of the commons. Learn about the histories of dispossessions, and ongoing collective actions and mobilizations to reclaim the commons for environmental & climate justice and ecological stewardship. Usually offered every year.

FREN 161a The Enigma of Being Oneself: From Du Bellay to Laferrière
[ djw fl hum wi ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Explores the relationship of identity formation and modern individualism in texts by writers working in France, Francophone Africa and Canada. Authors range from modern and contemporary writers Sarah Kofman, Dany Laferrière, Achille Mbembe, Alain Mabanckou, and Edouard Glissant to early-modern writers like Joachim Du Bellay and Michel de Montaigne. Usually offered every year.

FREN 162b From Les Confessions to Instagram: Self-Writing in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature
[ fl hum wi ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Through the works of major writers, the main goal of the course will be to study the many variations of autobiographical writing that characterize contemporary French and Francophone literature, and to relate them to the renewed exploration of the post-modern subject. We will examine along the way how the self relates to the others, how it engages with filiation, memory and history - (especially World War II and the Franco-Algerian War) - and we will put an emphasis on the notions of self-fashioning and performance. Usually offered every second year.

GECS 188b Human/Nature: European Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and What to Do About It
[ djw hum oc wi ]

Open to all students.

Introduces European attitudes towards climate change as reflected in policy, literature, film, and art, with a focus on workable future-oriented alternatives to fossil-fueled capitalism. Usually offered every second year.

HISP 142b Literature, Film, and Human Rights in Latin America
[ djw fl hum nw wi ]

Prerequisite: HISP 109b or HISP 111b, or instructor permission.

Examines literature, film (fiction and non-fiction), and other artistic expressions from Latin America, in conversation with the idea of human rights from the colonial arguments about slavery and the "natural rights" of the indigenous, to the advent of human rights in the context of post-conflict truth and reconciliation processes, to the emergence of gender and ethnicity as into the human rights framework, to the current debates about rights of nature in the midst of a global ecological crisis. Usually offered every third year.

HIST 136b Global War and Revolutions in the Eighteenth Century
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Surveys global conflicts and revolutions and examines exchanges of idea, peoples, and goods in the eighteenth-century Atlantic World. Explores the legacies of inter-imperial rivalry and the intellectual borrowings and innovations of the American, French, and Haitian revolutions in comparative perspective. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 178b Britain and India: Connected Histories
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Surveys the history of Britain and India from the rise of the East India Company to the present. Explores cultural and economic exchanges; shifts in power and phases of imperial rule; resistance and collaboration; nationalism; decolonization and partition; and postcolonial legacies. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 184b Swashbuckling Adventurers or Sea Bandits? The Chinese Pirate in Global Perspective
[ nw ss wi ]

Explores the commercial role, political economy, social structure, and national imaginations of the Chinese pirate situated in both world history and in comparison to "piracies" elsewhere. Usually offered every third year.

HIST 186a Europe in World War II
[ dl ss wi ]

Examines the military and diplomatic, social and economic history of the war. Topics include war origins; allied diplomacy; the neutrals; war propaganda; occupation, resistance, and collaboration; the mass murder of the Jews; "peace feelers"; the war economies; scientific warfare and the development of nuclear weapons; and the origins of the Cold War. Usually offered every third year.

HIST 187a Frenemy States: Identity and Integration in East Asia
[ ss wi ]

Examines the emergence and development of distinct national identities in East Asia. We focus upon key transformative moments and events in the histories of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam from the dawn of time to the early twentieth century. Usually offered every third year.

IGS 104a Seminar in International Order
[ oc ss wi ]

Prerequisites: IGS 8a and IGS 10A recommended.

Critically appraises the institutions known as the “international order.” We examine threats to this order and consider how it may evolve or erode with the renewed influence of rising powers and perturbations to the balance of power. Our interaction with the scholarly debate is interspersed with sessions on research methods to enable students to conduct research on related topics. Usually offered every year.

IGS 108a Seminar in Law, Justice, and Human Rights
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Explores international justice and human rights regimes along with concepts and prominent theories that inform the field. We examine specific cases carried out in different national settings and critique the utility and efficacy of international human rights institutions. Usually offered every year.

IGS 136b Contemporary Chinese Society and Culture
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Introduces students to contemporary Chinese society, with a focus on the rapid transformations that have taken place during the post-Mao era with a focus on family, gender, sexuality, migration, ethnicity, and family planning. Usually offered every third year.

IGS 138a China in the World
[ djw ss wi ]

This course examines China's role on the world stage. Looking at the history of China's interaction with the world, both at home and abroad, we will examine how China has affected, and been affected by, other societies and cultures. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 140a Styles of Globalization
[ ss wi ]

Why do some countries benefit from globalization while others lag behind? How do different nations balance issues such as free trade, foreign investment, and workers' rights? This course considers the real-world choices behind success and failure in the global economy. Usually offered every second year.

NEJS 183b Global Jewish Literature
[ hum wi ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took NEJS 171a in prior years.

Introduces important works of modern Jewish literature, graphic fiction, and film. Taking a comparative approach, it addresses major themes in contemporary Jewish culture, interrogates the "Jewishness" of the works and considers issues of language, poetics, and culture significant to Jewish identity. Usually offered every second year.

POL 133b Politics of Russia and the Post Communist World
[ ss wi ]

Overview of the politics of Russia and the former Soviet world. Topics include the fall and legacy of communism, trends of democracy and dictatorship, European integration, resurgent nationalism, social and economic patterns throughout the former Soviet Bloc, and Putin's rise and influence both within Russia and abroad. Usually offered every year.

POL 134b Seminar: The Global Migration Crisis
[ djw ss wi ]

Looks at immigration from the perspectives of policy-makers, migrants, and the groups affected by immigration in sender nations as well as destination countries. Introduces students to the history of migration policy, core concepts and facts about migration in the West, and to the theories and disagreements among immigrant scholars. Usually offered every second year.

POL 139a Seminar: The Radical Right: From Ballots to Bullets
[ deis-us oc ss wi ]

Radical right and far-right are umbrella terms used to refer to political parties and militant subcultures that differentiate themselves from mainstream conservatism. Students will be introduced to case studies of far-right groups and parties in Western Europe and the United States. We will discuss their ideologies and tactics, the different subcultures and the legal restraints that countries have used to control extremist groups linked to violence. Students will also learn about political science theories about the causes of far-right extremism. Usually offered every second year.

POL 144a Latin American Politics
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Examines the development and deepening of democracy in Latin America, focusing on the role of political institutions, economic development, the military, and U.S.-Latin American relations. Usually offered every year.

POL 161b Good Neighbor or Imperial Power: The Contested Evolution of US-Latin American Relations
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Studies the ambivalent and complex relationship between the U.S. and Latin America, focusing on how the exploitative dimension of this relationship has shaped societies across the region, and on how Latin American development can be beneficial for the U.S. Usually offered every year.

POL 163a Seminar: The United Nations and the United States
[ djw dl ss wi ]

Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

Investigates the United Nations organization and charter, with an emphasis on the integral role of the United States in its founding and operation. Using archival documents and other materials, explores topics such as UN enforcement actions, the Security Council veto, human rights, and the domestic politics of US commitments to the UN. Usually offered every year.

POL 184a Seminar: Global Justice
[ djw ss wi ]

Prerequisites: One course in Political Theory or Moral, Social and Political Philosophy.

Explores the development of the topic of global justice and its contents. Issues to be covered include international distributive justice, duties owed to the global poor, humanitarian intervention, the ethics of climate change, and immigration. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 111a Cognitive Sociology
[ ss wi ]

How do our brains shape our perception of reality? How does a preference for the familiar shape our perceptions of new situations? How does culture shape brain function and thus minds? This course will examine how we use culture and conversation to sustain and change how we think and the societies in which we live. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 146b Nationalism and Globalization
[ ss wi ]

In an age of globalization, why does nationalism thrive? Are globalization and nationalism rivals, strangers or possibly partners? Students will trace the emergence of nationalism while also examining globalization's impact on societies such as the United States, Russia, China, and India. Usually offered every second year.

AAAS 120a African History in Real Time
[ djw nw oc ss ]

This information literacy-driven course equips students with the skills to place current events in Africa in their historical context. Collectively the class builds 5-6 distinct course modules which entail sourcing and evaluating current news stories from a range of media outlets, selecting those that merit in-depth historical analysis, and developing a syllabus for each one. Usually offered every second year.

AAAS 128b Contemporary Africa
[ djw oc ss ]

A broad synopsis of the dynamic character of contemporary Africa and key current issues dominating the continent. Designed for students from all disciplines, the course will emphasize the utilization of critical thinking skills to consider the place and future of Africa in today's highly globalized world. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 142b Global Pandemics: History, Society, and Policy
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Takes a biosocial approach to pandemics like HIV/AIDS, SARS, Ebola, and COVID-19 as shaped by culture, economics, politics, and history. Discussion focuses on how gender, sexuality, religion, and folk practices shape pandemic situations. Usually offered every fourth year.

BIOL 134b Topics in Ecology
[ oc sn ]

Prerequisites: BIOL 23a, or permission of the instructor. Topics may vary from year to year. Please consult the Course Schedule for topic and description. Course may be repeated once for credit with permission of the instructor.

Annually, a different aspect of the global biosphere is selected for analysis. In any year the focus may be on specific ecosystems (e.g., terrestrial, aquatic, tropical, arctic), populations, system modeling, restoration ecology, or other aspects of ecology. Usually offered every year.

ECON 57a Environmental Economics
[ oc ss ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a.

Investigates the theoretical and policy problems posed by the use of renewable and nonrenewable resources. Theoretical topics include the optimal pricing of resources, the optimal use of standards and taxes to correct pollution problems under uncertainty, and the measurement of costs and benefits. Usually offered every year.

ECON 136b Economics of Digitization
[ oc ss ]

Prerequisites: ECON 80a and ECON 184b.

Studies how technological advances fundamentally change how markets function, leading to novel firm strategies and consumer harms. Topics include: pricing digital goods, review/ratings platforms, advertising, search platforms, resale of digital goods, etc. Usually offered every year.

ENG 32a 21st-Century Global Fiction: A Basic Course
[ djw hum nw oc ]

Offers an introduction to 21st-century global fiction in English. What is fiction and how does it illuminate contemporary issues such as migration, terrorism, and climate change? Authors include Zadie Smith, Amitav Ghosh, Chimamanda Adichie, Mohsin Hamid, J.M. Coetzee and others. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 52a Refugee Stories, Refugee Lives
[ deis-us djw dl hum nw oc ]

Yields 6 credits.

Examines the functions of storytelling in the refugee crisis. Its main objective is to further students' understanding of the political dimensions of storytelling. The course explores how reworking of reality enable people to question State and social structures. Usually offered every third year.

ENVS 107b Foundations of Global Environmental Diplomacy
[ oc ss ]

Examines international environmental diplomacy through a historical lens up to 1992. Specific topics range from wildlife conservation and transboundary air pollution to the trade in hazardous materials and climate change—along with many others. The course primarily aims to answer the overarching question: What can international actors do to protect the environment and environmental amenities? Usually offered every year.

FA 192a Studies in Modern and Contemporary Art
[ ca oc ]

Topics may vary from year to year; the course may be repeated for credit.

Usually offered every third year.

FREN 110a Cultural Representations
[ fl hum oc ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

A foundation course in French and Francophone culture, analyzing texts and other cultural phenomena such as film, painting, music, and politics. Usually offered every year.

FREN 111a The Republic
[ fl hum oc ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

The "Republic" analyzes how the republican ideal of the citizen devoid of religious, ethnic, or gender identity has fared in different Francophone political milieux. Course involves understanding how political institutions such as constitutions, parliaments, and court systems interact with reality of modern societies in which religious, ethnic, and gender identities play important roles. Usually offered every year.

GECS 188b Human/Nature: European Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and What to Do About It
[ djw hum oc wi ]

Open to all students.

Introduces European attitudes towards climate change as reflected in policy, literature, film, and art, with a focus on workable future-oriented alternatives to fossil-fueled capitalism. Usually offered every second year.

HISP 192b Latin American Global Film
[ djw hum nw oc ]

May be taught in English or Spanish.

We will study the dynamic between local and global imagination and forces in the production, circulation, and reception of films from and/or about "Latin America." Local productions, traditional topics and genres are now refashioned for international audiences. Some film directors and actors have gained mainstream global visibility; U.S.-based ‘platforms’ finance local productions for international markets. How are all these new and old images and narratives mobilized? What are all these forces and projections doing? Analysis of visual representation and film techniques will be combined with an attention to socio-cultural backgrounds. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 52b Europe in the Modern World
[ oc ss ]

Explores European history from the Enlightenment to the present emphasizing how developments in Europe have shaped and been shaped by broader global contexts. Topics include: revolution, industrialization, political and social reforms, nationalism, imperialism, legacies of global wars, totalitarianism, and decolonization. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 109b A Global History of Sport: Politics, Economy, Race and Culture
[ deis-us djw nw oc ss ]

Examines soccer, boxing, baseball, cricket and other sports to reflect on culture, politics, race, and globalization. With a focus on empire, gender, ethnicity, this course considers sport as the battleground for ideological and group contests. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 113b Crazy Rich Europeans: Wealth and Inequality in Modern History
[ djw oc ss ]

Brings together insights from modern European and Asian history, business, economics, and sociology. We will investigate the changing role, power, and composition of social elites in history and how they impacted workers, colonial populations, women, and urban landscapes in the past two centuries. We will study how actors as diverse as fashion models, Russian oligarchs, and powerful bankers gain their status and influence. We will also discuss the origins of global social inequality, including the ‘great divergence’ debate on Chinese and European modernization. How do we get from ‘Crazy Rich Europeans’ to ‘Crazy Rich Asians’? Usually offered every year.

HIST 135b Get Up, Stand Up: A Century of Revolutions in the Middle East
[ djw nw oc ss ]

An examination of the various revolutions that have shaped the modern Middle East since the late 19th century. The course focuses on four different revolutionary moments: The constitutional revolutions of the turn of the century, the anti-colonial revolutions of mid-century, the radical revolutions of the 1970's, and most recently, the Arab Spring revolutions that have affected the region since 2011. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 136b Global War and Revolutions in the Eighteenth Century
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Surveys global conflicts and revolutions and examines exchanges of idea, peoples, and goods in the eighteenth-century Atlantic World. Explores the legacies of inter-imperial rivalry and the intellectual borrowings and innovations of the American, French, and Haitian revolutions in comparative perspective. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 147a Russian Empire: Gender, Minorities, and Globalization
[ djw dl oc ss ]

Examines the processes and problems of modernization--state development, economic growth, social change, cultural achievements, and emergence of revolutionary and terrorist movements. Usually offered every year.

HIST 147b Twentieth-Century Russia: Revolution, Nationality, Global Power
[ dl oc ss ]

Russian history from the 1905 revolution to the present day, with particular emphasis on the Revolution of 1917, Stalinism, culture, and the decline and fall of the USSR. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 178b Britain and India: Connected Histories
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Surveys the history of Britain and India from the rise of the East India Company to the present. Explores cultural and economic exchanges; shifts in power and phases of imperial rule; resistance and collaboration; nationalism; decolonization and partition; and postcolonial legacies. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 187b Unequal Histories: Caste, Religion, and Dissent in India
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Examines the religious, political, and social dimensions of discrimination in India. In order to study caste, power, and representation, we will look at religious texts, historical debates, film, and literature from the Vedic Age to contemporary India. Usually offered every second year.

HIST/IGS 180b Modern India: From Partition to the Present
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Examines the history, culture, and economy of modern India (1947-2019) with a focus on key concerns, such as the environment, urbanization, gender/sexual relations, and the transformations of democratic politics. Usually offered every second year.

HIST/JOUR 163a The Road to September 11th and Beyond: History and Media
[ djw oc ss ]

The September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center ushered in two U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and drained the U.S. Treasury of at least $8 trillion. 9/11 radically changed the dynamics between the U.S. and the Middle East, along with those between the press and military and government officials. Co-taught by a historian of modern Middle East and a journalist who extensively covered these events, this course aims to give students a fresh lens for examining the history and the aftermath of this crucial event from both a Middle Eastern and American perspective. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 104a Seminar in International Order
[ oc ss wi ]

Prerequisites: IGS 8a and IGS 10A recommended.

Critically appraises the institutions known as the “international order.” We examine threats to this order and consider how it may evolve or erode with the renewed influence of rising powers and perturbations to the balance of power. Our interaction with the scholarly debate is interspersed with sessions on research methods to enable students to conduct research on related topics. Usually offered every year.

IGS 108a Seminar in Law, Justice, and Human Rights
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Explores international justice and human rights regimes along with concepts and prominent theories that inform the field. We examine specific cases carried out in different national settings and critique the utility and efficacy of international human rights institutions. Usually offered every year.

IGS 165a Revolution, Religion, and Terror: Postcolonial Histories
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Examines religious conflict, revolutionary violence, and civil war in modern South Asia. It looks at Jihad, Maoist militancy, rising fundamentalism, and political violence. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 175a Digital Asia: Democracy in the Internet Age
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Analyzes the transformative potential of the internet as an agent of development and as a mechanism for disrupting social and political orders in Asia, home to the world's largest democracy and also the world's largest authoritarian regime. Usually offered every second year.

LACLS 1a Introduction to Latin American and LatinX: Cultures, Histories, and Societies
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Provides a broad overview of the histories, cultures, and politics that continue to shape the Americas; specifically of the vast regions and populations of what came to be labeled as "Latin America," "the Caribbean" and what we now call "Latinx " populations in the USA. The class provides an introduction to Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies. It draws from different disciplines and fields of study that compose this field, such as history, anthropology, literature, visual arts, film, political science, among other perspectives and methodologies. Usually offered every year.

LGLS 130a Resolving Conflicts: Introduction to ADR and Mediation
[ oc ss ]

Designed for students interested in learning to constructively deal with conflict, this course examines the spectrum of ADR with a particular focus on mediation. Students will learn to become effective mediators and skilled facilitators of the mediation process. This course meets the requirements outlined in the Massachusetts Confidentiality Statute (MGL ch233 sec 23C) and Rule 8(c)(i) of the MA Supreme Judicial Court’s Uniform Rules on Dispute Resolution, the standard for mediating in the District Court and beyond in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Usually offered every second year.

POL 139a Seminar: The Radical Right: From Ballots to Bullets
[ deis-us oc ss wi ]

Radical right and far-right are umbrella terms used to refer to political parties and militant subcultures that differentiate themselves from mainstream conservatism. Students will be introduced to case studies of far-right groups and parties in Western Europe and the United States. We will discuss their ideologies and tactics, the different subcultures and the legal restraints that countries have used to control extremist groups linked to violence. Students will also learn about political science theories about the causes of far-right extremism. Usually offered every second year.

POL 161b Good Neighbor or Imperial Power: The Contested Evolution of US-Latin American Relations
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Studies the ambivalent and complex relationship between the U.S. and Latin America, focusing on how the exploitative dimension of this relationship has shaped societies across the region, and on how Latin American development can be beneficial for the U.S. Usually offered every year.

POL 167b Russian Foreign Policy
[ oc ss wi ]

Surveys Russian foreign policy in the contemporary world, with particular attention paid to the deep historical context for its attitudes and goals in international relations. Topics include relations with the larger post-communist region, the Muslim world, its ongoing antagonistic relations with America and the West, the rise of disinformation warfare on the internet, in addition to the distinct Russian perspective on geopolitics. Usually offered every year.

SOC 127a Religion, Ethnicity, and Nationalism
[ nw oc ss ]

Examines three sources of identity that are influential in global affairs: religion, ethnicity and nationalism. Considers theories of the relationship among these identities, especially "secularization theory," then reviews historical examples such as Poland, Iran, India, and Pakistan. Usually offered every second year.

WGS 5a Women, Genders, and Sexualities
[ deis-us dl oc ss ]

This interdisciplinary course introduces central concepts and topics in the field of women's, gender, and sexuality studies. Explores the position of women and other genders in diverse settings and the impact of gender as a social, cultural, and intellectual category in the United States and around the globe. Asks how gendered institutions, behaviors, and representations have been configured in the past and function in the present, and also examines the ways in which gender and sexuality intersect with many other vectors of identity and circumstance in forming human affairs. Usually offered every fall.

WGS 105b Feminisms: History, Theory, and Practice
[ deis-us oc ss ]

Prerequisite: Students are encouraged, though not required, to take WGS 5a prior to enrolling in this course.

Examines diverse theories of sex and gender within a multicultural framework, considering historical changes in feminist thought, the theoretical underpinnings of various feminist practices, and the implications of diverse and often conflicting theories for both academic inquiry and social change. Usually offered every year.

WLIT 100a Introduction to Global Literature
[ dl hum oc ]

Core course for COML major and minor.

What is common and what is different in literatures of different cultures and times? How do literary ideas move from one culture to another? In this course students read theoretical texts, as well as literary works from around the world. Usually offered every year.

HIST/IGS 180b Modern India: From Partition to the Present
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Examines the history, culture, and economy of modern India (1947-2019) with a focus on key concerns, such as the environment, urbanization, gender/sexual relations, and the transformations of democratic politics. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 10a Introduction to International and Global Studies
[ djw dl ss ]

"Globalization" touches us more every day. Introduces the challenges of globalization to national and international governance, economic success, individual and group identities, cultural diversity, the environment, and inequalities within and between nations, regions of the globe, gender, and race. Usually offered every year.

IGS 175a Digital Asia: Democracy in the Internet Age
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Analyzes the transformative potential of the internet as an agent of development and as a mechanism for disrupting social and political orders in Asia, home to the world's largest democracy and also the world's largest authoritarian regime. Usually offered every second year.

AAAS 125b Caribbean Women and Globalization: Sexuality, Citizenship, Work
[ ss wi ]

Utilizing perspectives from sociology, anthropology, fiction, and music to examine the relationship between women's sexuality and conceptions of labor, citizenship, and sovereignty. The course considers these alongside conceptions of masculinity, contending feminisms, and the global perspective. Usually offered every second year.

AAAS 128b Contemporary Africa
[ djw oc ss ]

A broad synopsis of the dynamic character of contemporary Africa and key current issues dominating the continent. Designed for students from all disciplines, the course will emphasize the utilization of critical thinking skills to consider the place and future of Africa in today's highly globalized world. Usually offered every second year.

AAAS 134b Novel and Film of the African Diaspora
[ djw hum nw ]

Writers and filmmakers, who are usually examined separately under national or regional canonical categories such as "(North) American," "Latin American," "African," "British," or "Caribbean," are brought together here to examine transnational identities and investments in "authentic," "African," or "black" identities. Usually offered every third year.

AMST 136a Planet Hollywood: American Cinema in Global Perspective
[ hum ss ]

Examines the global reach of Hollywood cinema as an art, business, and purveyor of American values, tracking how Hollywood has absorbed foreign influences and how other nations have adapted and resisted the Hollywood juggernaut. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 26a Communication and Media
[ dl ss ]

A wide-ranging exploration of the human communicative capacity, starting with verbal and visual communicative modalities and culminating in the study of communication through mass and social media. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 70a Business, Culture and Society
[ ss ]

In a diverse and rapidly changing global marketplace, it is crucial to understand local traditions, customs and cultural preferences. In this course, we adopt anthropological approaches to understand their impact on business practices, products, services, clients and ideas. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 80a Anthropology of Religion
[ nw ss ]

Introduces the anthropological study of religious experience and practices across diverse contexts. Studies rituals, from initiation to conversion to pilgrimage, and examines the relationship between religion, society, and politics in a variety of societies. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 118b Culture and Power in the Middle East
[ djw ss ]

Examines the peoples and societies of the Middle East from an anthropological perspective. Explores problems of cross-cultural examination, the notion of the Middle East as an area of study, and the role of anthropology in the formation of the idea of the 'Middle East.' To this end, the course is divided into sections devoted to understanding and problematizing key concepts and themes central to our understanding of the region, including tribe and state, family and kinship, gender and sexuality, honor and shame, tradition and modernity, and religion and secularism. Course materials will include critical ethnographies based on field work in the region as well as locally produced materials such as literature, music, film and other visual arts. Usually offered every fourth year.

ANTH 127a Medicine, Body, and Culture
[ djw nw ss ]

Examines main areas of inquiry in medical anthropology, including medicine as a sociocultural construct, political and economic dimensions of suffering and health, patients and healers in comparative medical systems. Usually offered every year.

ANTH 130b Visuality and Culture
[ dl ss ]

Introduces students to the study of visual, aural, and artistic media through an ethnographic lens. Course combines written and creative assignments to understand how culture shapes how we make meaning out of images and develop media literacy. Topics include ethnographic/documentary film, advertising, popular culture, viral videos and special effects, photography, art worlds, and the technological development of scientific images. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 134a Contemporary South Asia
[ djw ss ]

Explores contemporary life in a region called South Asia (including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal) through divergent histories, cultures, and concepts. Explores not just the region’s histories and cultures, but also a string of concepts and debates that simultaneously make and unmake the region as both a stable object of study as well as place on a map—including caste, Partition, ethnic conflict, religion, nationalism, gender, kinship, liberalization, postcoloniality, development, diaspora, and queerness. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 139b Language, Ethnicity, and Nationalism
[ ss ]

Explores the relationships between communication and community, and the ways language helps to shape social categories such as ethnic group, tribe, race, and nation. What role does language play in producing experiences of belonging and difference? A key component of this course will be exploring the relationship between language and culture. This course will consider a range of global cases, from large-scale projects like language standardization to smaller-scale community practices like code-switching, inflection, and slang to investigate the relationship between how we speak, who we are, and where we feel we belong. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 163b Economies and Culture
[ djw nw ss ]

Prerequisite: ANTH 1a, ECON 2a, ECON 10a, or permission of the instructor.

We read in newspapers and books and hear in everyday discussion about "the economy," an identifiably separate sphere of human life with its own rules and principles and its own scholarly discipline (economics). The class starts with the premise that this "common sense" idea of the economy is only one among a number of possible perspectives on the ways people use resources to meet their basic and not-so-basic human needs. In the course, we draw on cross-cultural examples, and take a look at the cultural aspects of finance, corporations, and markets. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 164a Medicine and Religion
[ djw nw ss ]

Considers the convergence of two cultural spheres that are normally treated as separate: medicine and religion. The course will examine their overlap, such as in healing and dying, as well as points of contention through historical and contemporary global ethnographies. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 178b Culture, Gender and Power in East Asia
[ nw ss wi ]

Examines the role of culture in changing gender power relations in East Asia by exploring how the historical legacy of Confucianism in the region influences the impact of changes such as the constitutional proclamation of gender equality and rapid industrialization. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 184b Art in the Ancient World
[ djw nw ss ]

A cross-cultural and diachronic exploration of art, focusing on the communicative aspects of visual aesthetics. The survey takes a broad view of how human societies deploy images and objects to foster identities, lure into consumption, generate political propaganda, engage in ritual, render sacred propositions tangible, and chart the character of the cosmos. Usually offered every second year.

ENG 32a 21st-Century Global Fiction: A Basic Course
[ djw hum nw oc ]

Offers an introduction to 21st-century global fiction in English. What is fiction and how does it illuminate contemporary issues such as migration, terrorism, and climate change? Authors include Zadie Smith, Amitav Ghosh, Chimamanda Adichie, Mohsin Hamid, J.M. Coetzee and others. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 62b Contemporary African Literature, Global Perspectives
[ djw dl hum nw oc ]

What is "African" in African literature when the majority of writers are somehow removed from the African societies they portray? How do expatriate writers represent African subjectivities and cultures at the intersection of Diaspora and globalization? Who reads the works produced by these writers? Usually offered every third year.

ENG 137b Women and War
[ djw dl hum nw ]

Examines how African women writers and filmmakers use testimony to bear witness to mass violence. How do these writers resist political and sociocultural silencing systems that reduce traumatic experience to silence, denial, and terror? Usually offered every third year.

ENG 170a Nigerian Movies in the World
[ hum nw ]

Introduces students to Nigeria's film industry, one of the world's largest. It focuses on both the form and the content of Nollywood films. Examines how Nollywood films project local, national, and regional issues onto global screens. Usually offered every third year.

FA/NEJS 43a Middle Eastern Cities: Navigating the Transition from Empires to Nation-States and the Globalized Wo
[ ca djw hum ]

Offers an integrated exploration of Middle Eastern literature, urbanism, and architecture. It delves into the vibrant urban heritage of the Middle East, spanning from ancient metropolises like Cairo, Damascus, Istanbul, Jerusalem, and Baghdad. By engaging in a comprehensive examination of Middle Eastern cities, students will acquire profound insights into the region's multifaceted histories, including the impacts of colonialism, imperialism, nation-state formation, and the dynamics within our increasingly globalized world. Usually offered every second year.

FREN 111a The Republic
[ fl hum oc ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

The "Republic" analyzes how the republican ideal of the citizen devoid of religious, ethnic, or gender identity has fared in different Francophone political milieux. Course involves understanding how political institutions such as constitutions, parliaments, and court systems interact with reality of modern societies in which religious, ethnic, and gender identities play important roles. Usually offered every year.

FREN 151b Francophone Identities in a Global World: An Introduction to Francophone Literature
[ fl hum wi ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Introduces Francophone literature and film, retracing, through the works of great contemporary Francophone writers and directors, the evolution of the Francophone world, from the colonial struggles to the transcultural and transnational trajectories of our global era. Usually offered every second year.

HISP 192b Latin American Global Film
[ djw hum nw oc ]

May be taught in English or Spanish.

We will study the dynamic between local and global imagination and forces in the production, circulation, and reception of films from and/or about "Latin America." Local productions, traditional topics and genres are now refashioned for international audiences. Some film directors and actors have gained mainstream global visibility; U.S.-based ‘platforms’ finance local productions for international markets. How are all these new and old images and narratives mobilized? What are all these forces and projections doing? Analysis of visual representation and film techniques will be combined with an attention to socio-cultural backgrounds. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 71b Latin American and Caribbean History II: Modernity, Medicine, Sexuality
[ djw hum nw ss ]

Studies the idea of "modernity" in Latin America and Caribbean, centered on roles of health and human reproduction in definitions of the "modern" citizen: post-slavery labor, race and national identity; modern politics and economics; transnational relations. Usually offered every year.

IGS 173a Asian Gangsters: Contemporary Crime Cinema
[ djw dl ss ]

Studies contemporary crime films to examine modern Asian society and politics. Drawing upon film theory, cultural studies, historical and sociological research, this class considers the world's largest media market to understand the continent's rapidly changing socio-political milieu. Usually offered every second year.

LACLS 1a Introduction to Latin American and LatinX: Cultures, Histories, and Societies
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Provides a broad overview of the histories, cultures, and politics that continue to shape the Americas; specifically of the vast regions and populations of what came to be labeled as "Latin America," "the Caribbean" and what we now call "Latinx " populations in the USA. The class provides an introduction to Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies. It draws from different disciplines and fields of study that compose this field, such as history, anthropology, literature, visual arts, film, political science, among other perspectives and methodologies. Usually offered every year.

MUS 3b Global Soundscapes: Performing Musical Tradition Across Time and Place
[ ca nw ]

Open to all students. Required of all Cultural Studies track majors.

What are we listening to? Applies engaged listening skills and critical analysis for a deeper appreciation of (non-Western) music as a cultural expression. Focuses on particular traditions as well as social context, impact of globalization, cultural production, cultural rights, etc. Usually offered every year.

NEJS 183b Global Jewish Literature
[ hum wi ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took NEJS 171a in prior years.

Introduces important works of modern Jewish literature, graphic fiction, and film. Taking a comparative approach, it addresses major themes in contemporary Jewish culture, interrogates the "Jewishness" of the works and considers issues of language, poetics, and culture significant to Jewish identity. Usually offered every second year.

REL 107a Introduction to World Religions
[ hum nw ]

An introduction to the study of religion; this core course surveys and broadly explores some of the major religions across the globe.

SAS 100a India and Pakistan: Understanding South Asia
[ djw hum nw ss ]

Examines the making and unmaking of modern South Asia as a region, with particular focus on India and Pakistan as well as their connections to Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Using perspectives from history, politics, anthropology, literature, and film, the course introduces students to key themes in the study of South Asia, such as colonialism and anti-colonial struggles, legacies of empire, caste critique and Dalit thought, gender and sexuality, religion, and popular culture. Usually offered every year. Usually offered every year.

SAS 150b Love, Sex, and Country: Films from India
[ djw hum nw ]

A study of Hindi films made in India since 1947 with a few notable exceptions from regional film, as well as some recent films made in English. Students will read Hindi films as texts/narratives of the nation to probe the occurrence of cultural, religious, historical, political, and social themes. Usually offered every third year.

SOC 111a Cognitive Sociology
[ ss wi ]

How do our brains shape our perception of reality? How does a preference for the familiar shape our perceptions of new situations? How does culture shape brain function and thus minds? This course will examine how we use culture and conversation to sustain and change how we think and the societies in which we live. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 124a Gender, Sexuality, and Globalization
[ djw oc ss ]

Introduces theories of gender, sexuality, and transnational feminism. Uses sociological research to examine labor, social movements, politics, and culture in global perspective, emphasizing Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 127a Religion, Ethnicity, and Nationalism
[ nw oc ss ]

Examines three sources of identity that are influential in global affairs: religion, ethnicity and nationalism. Considers theories of the relationship among these identities, especially "secularization theory," then reviews historical examples such as Poland, Iran, India, and Pakistan. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 146a Mass Communication Theory
[ ss ]

An examination of key theories in mass communication, including mass culture, hegemony, the production of culture, and public sphere. Themes discussed include the nature of media effects, the role of the audience, and the extent of diversity in the mass media. Usually offered every year.

SOC 162a Intellectuals and Revolutionary Politics
[ ss ]

Can you change a society by changing its culture? How do writers, painters, and bloggers give their countries new visions of justice -- or even revenge? This class studies the ideas behind revolutions, who creates them, and why. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 168a Democracy and Inequality in Global Perspective
[ ss ]

Can democracy survive great inequalities of wealth and status? In authoritarian countries, does inequality inspire revolution or obedience? What role does culture play in determining which inequalities are tolerable and which are not? Cases usually include the United States, India, and China. Usually offered every second year.

WGS 105b Feminisms: History, Theory, and Practice
[ deis-us oc ss ]

Prerequisite: Students are encouraged, though not required, to take WGS 5a prior to enrolling in this course.

Examines diverse theories of sex and gender within a multicultural framework, considering historical changes in feminist thought, the theoretical underpinnings of various feminist practices, and the implications of diverse and often conflicting theories for both academic inquiry and social change. Usually offered every year.

WGS 135b Postcolonial Feminisms
[ hum oc ]

Examines feminist theories, literature, and film from formerly colonized, Anglophone countries in South Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa. It takes the shared path of decolonization and postcoloniality to discuss the development of feminist discourse and the diverse trajectories of gendered lives. Usually offered every third year.

WLIT 100a Introduction to Global Literature
[ dl hum oc ]

Core course for COML major and minor.

What is common and what is different in literatures of different cultures and times? How do literary ideas move from one culture to another? In this course students read theoretical texts, as well as literary works from around the world. Usually offered every year.

AAAS 127a African Refugees
[ djw ss ]

An in-depth study of African refugees in dynamic contexts, and their centrality to the understanding and analysis of key issues in the politics, history, and international relations of African States. Usually offered every year.

AAAS 128b Contemporary Africa
[ djw oc ss ]

A broad synopsis of the dynamic character of contemporary Africa and key current issues dominating the continent. Designed for students from all disciplines, the course will emphasize the utilization of critical thinking skills to consider the place and future of Africa in today's highly globalized world. Usually offered every second year.

AAAS 131b African Women's and Gender Studies
[ djw ss wi ]

Introduction to the genealogy, epistemology, and pedagogy of African Women's and Gender Studies. Students examine a range of gendered experiences in Africa by applying interdisciplinary frames from feminist theory, history, queer studies, development studies, political science, economics, peace studies, literary, art and performance studies, and so on. Students critically evaluate scholarship that deconstructs static notions about women and gender in Africa by centering decolonial perspectives on the topics covered. Usually offered every second year.

AMST 136a Planet Hollywood: American Cinema in Global Perspective
[ hum ss ]

Examines the global reach of Hollywood cinema as an art, business, and purveyor of American values, tracking how Hollywood has absorbed foreign influences and how other nations have adapted and resisted the Hollywood juggernaut. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 55a Anthropology of Development
[ nw ss ]

Examines efforts to address global poverty that are typically labeled as "development." Privileging the perspectives of ordinary people, and looking carefully at the institutions involved in development, the course relies on ethnographic case studies that will draw students into the complexity of global inequality. Broad development themes such as public health, agriculture, the environment, democracy, poverty, and entrepreneurship will be explored. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 80a Anthropology of Religion
[ nw ss ]

Introduces the anthropological study of religious experience and practices across diverse contexts. Studies rituals, from initiation to conversion to pilgrimage, and examines the relationship between religion, society, and politics in a variety of societies. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 127a Medicine, Body, and Culture
[ djw nw ss ]

Examines main areas of inquiry in medical anthropology, including medicine as a sociocultural construct, political and economic dimensions of suffering and health, patients and healers in comparative medical systems. Usually offered every year.

ANTH 134a Contemporary South Asia
[ djw ss ]

Explores contemporary life in a region called South Asia (including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal) through divergent histories, cultures, and concepts. Explores not just the region’s histories and cultures, but also a string of concepts and debates that simultaneously make and unmake the region as both a stable object of study as well as place on a map—including caste, Partition, ethnic conflict, religion, nationalism, gender, kinship, liberalization, postcoloniality, development, diaspora, and queerness. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 139b Language, Ethnicity, and Nationalism
[ ss ]

Explores the relationships between communication and community, and the ways language helps to shape social categories such as ethnic group, tribe, race, and nation. What role does language play in producing experiences of belonging and difference? A key component of this course will be exploring the relationship between language and culture. This course will consider a range of global cases, from large-scale projects like language standardization to smaller-scale community practices like code-switching, inflection, and slang to investigate the relationship between how we speak, who we are, and where we feel we belong. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 140b Critical Perspectives in Global Health
[ deis-us djw nw ss ]

What value systems and other sociocultural factors underlie global public health policy? How can anthropology shed light on debates about the best ways to improve health outcomes? This course examines issues from malaria to HIV/AIDS, from tobacco cessation to immunization. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 142b Global Pandemics: History, Society, and Policy
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Takes a biosocial approach to pandemics like HIV/AIDS, SARS, Ebola, and COVID-19 as shaped by culture, economics, politics, and history. Discussion focuses on how gender, sexuality, religion, and folk practices shape pandemic situations. Usually offered every fourth year.

ANTH 163b Economies and Culture
[ djw nw ss ]

Prerequisite: ANTH 1a, ECON 2a, ECON 10a, or permission of the instructor.

We read in newspapers and books and hear in everyday discussion about "the economy," an identifiably separate sphere of human life with its own rules and principles and its own scholarly discipline (economics). The class starts with the premise that this "common sense" idea of the economy is only one among a number of possible perspectives on the ways people use resources to meet their basic and not-so-basic human needs. In the course, we draw on cross-cultural examples, and take a look at the cultural aspects of finance, corporations, and markets. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 164a Medicine and Religion
[ djw nw ss ]

Considers the convergence of two cultural spheres that are normally treated as separate: medicine and religion. The course will examine their overlap, such as in healing and dying, as well as points of contention through historical and contemporary global ethnographies. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 184b Art in the Ancient World
[ djw nw ss ]

A cross-cultural and diachronic exploration of art, focusing on the communicative aspects of visual aesthetics. The survey takes a broad view of how human societies deploy images and objects to foster identities, lure into consumption, generate political propaganda, engage in ritual, render sacred propositions tangible, and chart the character of the cosmos. Usually offered every second year.

BIOL 17b Conservation Biology
[ sn ]

Prerequisite: BIOL 16a or ENVS 2a.

Considers the current worldwide loss of biological diversity, causes of this loss, and methods for protecting and conserving biodiversity. Explores the science of conservation focused on the biological aspects of the problems and their solutions. Usually offered every year.

CHEM 33a Environmental Chemistry
[ sn ]

Prerequisite: A satisfactory grade (C- or higher) in CHEM 11b or 15b or the equivalent.

The course surveys the important chemical principles and reactions that determine the balance of the molecular species in the environment and how human activity affects this balance. The class evaluates current issues of environmental concern such as ozone depletion, global warming, sustainable energy, toxic chemicals, water pollution, and green chemistry. Usually offered every year.

ECON 57a Environmental Economics
[ oc ss ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a.

Investigates the theoretical and policy problems posed by the use of renewable and nonrenewable resources. Theoretical topics include the optimal pricing of resources, the optimal use of standards and taxes to correct pollution problems under uncertainty, and the measurement of costs and benefits. Usually offered every year.

ECON 122b The Economics of the Middle East
[ nw ss wi ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a or the equivalent. Does not count toward the upper-level elective requirement for the major in economics.

Examines the Middle East economies ' past experiences, present situation, and future challenges ' drawing on theories, policy formulations and empirical studies of economic growth, trade, poverty, income distribution, labor markets, finance and banking, government reforms, globalization, and Arab-Israeli political economy. Usually offered every year.

ECON 141b Economics of Innovation
[ ss ]

Prerequisites: ECON 80a and ECON 83a or permission of the instructor.

Studies innovation and technological change as the central focus of modern economies. Topics include the sources of growth, economics of research and development, innovation, diffusion and technology transfer, appropriability, patents, information markets, productivity, institutional innovation, and global competitiveness. Usually offered every year.

ECON 175a Introduction to the Economics of Development
[ djw ss wi ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a or permission of the instructor. Does not count toward the upper-level elective requirement for the major in economics.

An introduction to various models of economic growth and development and evaluation of these perspectives from the experience of developing and industrial countries. Usually offered every second year.

ECON 176a Health, Hunger, and the Household in Developing Countries
[ djw nw ss ]

Prerequisites: ECON 80a and ECON 184b or permission of the instructor.

Examines aspects of poverty and nutrition that are confronted by households in low-income countries. Examines these issues primarily from a microeconomic perspective, although some macroeconomic angles are explored as well. Usually offered every second year.

ENG 52a Refugee Stories, Refugee Lives
[ deis-us djw dl hum nw oc ]

Yields 6 credits.

Examines the functions of storytelling in the refugee crisis. Its main objective is to further students' understanding of the political dimensions of storytelling. The course explores how reworking of reality enable people to question State and social structures. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 62b Contemporary African Literature, Global Perspectives
[ djw dl hum nw oc ]

What is "African" in African literature when the majority of writers are somehow removed from the African societies they portray? How do expatriate writers represent African subjectivities and cultures at the intersection of Diaspora and globalization? Who reads the works produced by these writers? Usually offered every third year.

ENG 111b Postcolonial Theory
[ djw hum wi ]

Introduces students to key concepts in postcolonial theory. Traces the consequences of European colonialism for politics, culture and literature around the world, situates these within ongoing contemporary debates, and considers the usefulness of postcolonial theory for understanding the world today. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 127b Migrating Bodies, Migrating Texts
[ djw hum nw ]

Beginning with the region's representation as a tabula rasa, examines the textual and visual constructions of the Caribbean as colony, homeland, backyard, paradise, and Babylon, and how the region's migrations have prompted ideas about evolution, hedonism, imperialism, nationalism, and diaspora. Usually offered every second year.

ENG 170a Nigerian Movies in the World
[ hum nw ]

Introduces students to Nigeria's film industry, one of the world's largest. It focuses on both the form and the content of Nollywood films. Examines how Nollywood films project local, national, and regional issues onto global screens. Usually offered every third year.

ENVS 2a Fundamentals of Environmental Challenges
[ sn ]

Provides a broad interdisciplinary introduction to environmental studies. Examines several key environmental challenges including climate change, biodiversity loss, water issues, and pollutants through an array of lenses from the natural and social sciences. Usually offered every year.

ENVS 107b Foundations of Global Environmental Diplomacy
[ oc ss ]

Examines international environmental diplomacy through a historical lens up to 1992. Specific topics range from wildlife conservation and transboundary air pollution to the trade in hazardous materials and climate change—along with many others. The course primarily aims to answer the overarching question: What can international actors do to protect the environment and environmental amenities? Usually offered every year.

ENVS 118b International Environmental Conflict and Cooperation
[ ss ]

Investigates environmental issues through the lens of international diplomacy from 1992 to the present day. Examines how diplomatic initiatives have—and importantly, have not—shaped the contemporary structure of international environmental relations as well as the severity of environmental threats. Usually offered every year.

ENVS 131b The Political Economy of Global Climate Governance
[ djw ss ]

Introduction to the  political economy of climate governance and its social justice implications, especially the perspectives and proposals from the global South (Latin America, Africa, and South Asia). This course will map, compare, and systematize different proposals based on the green economy to public ownership and control over common goods proposals like just transition and buen vivir. Students are encouraged to discuss and apply concepts to their own creative proposals for social interventions, developing their practice and skills for climate activism, engagement, and leadership. Usually offered every year.

HISP 192b Latin American Global Film
[ djw hum nw oc ]

May be taught in English or Spanish.

We will study the dynamic between local and global imagination and forces in the production, circulation, and reception of films from and/or about "Latin America." Local productions, traditional topics and genres are now refashioned for international audiences. Some film directors and actors have gained mainstream global visibility; U.S.-based ‘platforms’ finance local productions for international markets. How are all these new and old images and narratives mobilized? What are all these forces and projections doing? Analysis of visual representation and film techniques will be combined with an attention to socio-cultural backgrounds. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 71b Latin American and Caribbean History II: Modernity, Medicine, Sexuality
[ djw hum nw ss ]

Studies the idea of "modernity" in Latin America and Caribbean, centered on roles of health and human reproduction in definitions of the "modern" citizen: post-slavery labor, race and national identity; modern politics and economics; transnational relations. Usually offered every year.

HS 110a Labor, Work, and Inequality
[ ss ]

Examines what economic and social factors drive inequality in terms of conditions at work, from wages to discrimination to worker voice, and how these conditions are connected to business decisions, government policies, union and worker advocacy, and worker norms and beliefs. Usually offered every year.

HSSP 102a Introduction to Global Health
[ ss ]

A primer on major issues in health care in developing nations. Topics include the natural history of disease and levels of prevention; epidemiological transitions; health disparities; and determinants of health including culture, social context, and behavior. Also covers: infectious and chronic disease incidence and prevalence; the role of nutrition, education, reproductive trends, and poverty; demographic transition including aging and urbanization; the structure and financing of health systems; and the globalization of health. Usually offered every year.

HSSP 152b Introduction to Demography: Social Determinants of Health and Wellbeing
[ ss ]

Explores the social and health consequences of population dynamics within the U.S. and globally that affect wellbeing of families and nations including poverty and inequality, maternal and child health, aging, fertility and epidemiological transitions, workforce, immigration among other policy concerns. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 130a Crossing Borders: Mobility and Displacement in a Global Age
[ ss ]

Introduces students to the social, cultural, religious, political, and economic forces that shape global migration today. We follow migration flows across borders and assess their implications for the migrant, the state, and the global economy. Case studies include refugees and asylees whose rights are protected by international law. Usually offered every second year.

LACLS 1a Introduction to Latin American and LatinX: Cultures, Histories, and Societies
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Provides a broad overview of the histories, cultures, and politics that continue to shape the Americas; specifically of the vast regions and populations of what came to be labeled as "Latin America," "the Caribbean" and what we now call "Latinx " populations in the USA. The class provides an introduction to Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies. It draws from different disciplines and fields of study that compose this field, such as history, anthropology, literature, visual arts, film, political science, among other perspectives and methodologies. Usually offered every year.

LGLS 124b Comparative Law and Development
[ djw nw ss ]

Surveys legal systems across the world with special application to countries in the process of political, social, or economic transition. Examines constitutional and rule-of-law principles in the context of developing global networks. Usually offered every second year.

POL 134b Seminar: The Global Migration Crisis
[ djw ss wi ]

Looks at immigration from the perspectives of policy-makers, migrants, and the groups affected by immigration in sender nations as well as destination countries. Introduces students to the history of migration policy, core concepts and facts about migration in the West, and to the theories and disagreements among immigrant scholars. Usually offered every second year.

POL 144a Latin American Politics
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Examines the development and deepening of democracy in Latin America, focusing on the role of political institutions, economic development, the military, and U.S.-Latin American relations. Usually offered every year.

REL 107a Introduction to World Religions
[ hum nw ]

An introduction to the study of religion; this core course surveys and broadly explores some of the major religions across the globe.

SOC 127a Religion, Ethnicity, and Nationalism
[ nw oc ss ]

Examines three sources of identity that are influential in global affairs: religion, ethnicity and nationalism. Considers theories of the relationship among these identities, especially "secularization theory," then reviews historical examples such as Poland, Iran, India, and Pakistan. Usually offered every second year.

WLIT 100a Introduction to Global Literature
[ dl hum oc ]

Core course for COML major and minor.

What is common and what is different in literatures of different cultures and times? How do literary ideas move from one culture to another? In this course students read theoretical texts, as well as literary works from around the world. Usually offered every year.

ANTH 70a Business, Culture and Society
[ ss ]

In a diverse and rapidly changing global marketplace, it is crucial to understand local traditions, customs and cultural preferences. In this course, we adopt anthropological approaches to understand their impact on business practices, products, services, clients and ideas. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 134a Contemporary South Asia
[ djw ss ]

Explores contemporary life in a region called South Asia (including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal) through divergent histories, cultures, and concepts. Explores not just the region’s histories and cultures, but also a string of concepts and debates that simultaneously make and unmake the region as both a stable object of study as well as place on a map—including caste, Partition, ethnic conflict, religion, nationalism, gender, kinship, liberalization, postcoloniality, development, diaspora, and queerness. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 150a Environmental Justice in Global Perspective
[ djw ss ]

Explores anthropological and humanistic approaches to understanding human-environment interactions, the global climate crisis, and environmental justice and climate justice movements highlighting how ecological crises have disproportionately impacted the poor, women and children, and Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. Key themes include: cultural understandings of “nature” and the “environment;” the cultural politics of race, indigeneity, and nature; militarism, empire, and the environment; feminist, queer and decolonial ecologies; Asian American and Pacific Islander environmental justice movements; and perspectives on the global climate crisis and the Anthropocene from the Global South. Usually offered every second year.

CHIN 136b Chinese Modernism in International Context
[ hum nw ]

Taught in English.

Examines the origins, recurrences, and metamorphosis of modernistic styles and movements in twentieth-century Chinese literature, film, fine art, and intellectual discourses. Usually offered every second year.

ECON 28b The Global Economy
[ ss wi ]

Prerequisites: ECON 2a or ECON 10a and ECON 20a. ECON 20a may be taken concurrently with ECON 28b.

Applies the basic tools and models of economic analysis to a wide range of topics in international economics. Usually offered every semester.

ECON 30a The Economy of China
[ nw ss ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a.

Analysis of China's economic transformation with particular emphasis on China's economic reforms since 1978, including the restructuring of its enterprise, fiscal, financial, and political systems and the roles of trade, foreign investment, and technology in driving China's economic advance. Usually offered every year.

ECON 57a Environmental Economics
[ oc ss ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a.

Investigates the theoretical and policy problems posed by the use of renewable and nonrenewable resources. Theoretical topics include the optimal pricing of resources, the optimal use of standards and taxes to correct pollution problems under uncertainty, and the measurement of costs and benefits. Usually offered every year.

ECON 65b Governance, Bureaucracy, and Economic Development
[ djw ss wi ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a.

Analyzes the role of institutions, governance, and bureaucracy in economic development. Topics include transaction costs, role of institutions, governance performance indicators, causes and consequences of corruption, anti-corruption policies, principal-agent theory and bureaucratic behavior. The course also includes a detailed case study on the role of governance and bureaucratic reforms in China's economic success since 1980. Usually offered every second year.

ECON 122b The Economics of the Middle East
[ nw ss wi ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a or the equivalent. Does not count toward the upper-level elective requirement for the major in economics.

Examines the Middle East economies ' past experiences, present situation, and future challenges ' drawing on theories, policy formulations and empirical studies of economic growth, trade, poverty, income distribution, labor markets, finance and banking, government reforms, globalization, and Arab-Israeli political economy. Usually offered every year.

ECON 136b Economics of Digitization
[ oc ss ]

Prerequisites: ECON 80a and ECON 184b.

Studies how technological advances fundamentally change how markets function, leading to novel firm strategies and consumer harms. Topics include: pricing digital goods, review/ratings platforms, advertising, search platforms, resale of digital goods, etc. Usually offered every year.

ECON 161a International Macroeconomics and Finance
[ ss ]

Prerequisite: ECON 82b.

Applications of international economic theory--regarding trade, the balance of payments, investments, and exchange rates--to the management of import/export firms and multinational corporations. Usually offered every year.

ECON 172b Money and Banking
[ ss wi ]

Prerequisites: ECON 82b and ECON 83a or permission of the instructor.

Examines the relationship of the financial system to real economic activity, focusing especially on banks and central banks. Topics include the monetary and payments systems; financial instruments and their pricing; the structure, management, and regulation of bank and nonbank financial intermediaries; and the design and operations of central banks in a modern economy. Usually offered every year.

ECON 175a Introduction to the Economics of Development
[ djw ss wi ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a or permission of the instructor. Does not count toward the upper-level elective requirement for the major in economics.

An introduction to various models of economic growth and development and evaluation of these perspectives from the experience of developing and industrial countries. Usually offered every second year.

ENG 32a 21st-Century Global Fiction: A Basic Course
[ djw hum nw oc ]

Offers an introduction to 21st-century global fiction in English. What is fiction and how does it illuminate contemporary issues such as migration, terrorism, and climate change? Authors include Zadie Smith, Amitav Ghosh, Chimamanda Adichie, Mohsin Hamid, J.M. Coetzee and others. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 127a The Novel in India
[ djw hum nw ]

Survey of the novel and short story of the Indian subcontinent, their formal experiments in context of nationalism and postcolonial history. Authors may include Tagore, Anand, Manto, Desani, Narayan, Desai, Devi, Rushdie, Roy, Mistry, and Chaudhuri. Usually offered every second year.

ENG 127b Migrating Bodies, Migrating Texts
[ djw hum nw ]

Beginning with the region's representation as a tabula rasa, examines the textual and visual constructions of the Caribbean as colony, homeland, backyard, paradise, and Babylon, and how the region's migrations have prompted ideas about evolution, hedonism, imperialism, nationalism, and diaspora. Usually offered every second year.

ENVS 2a Fundamentals of Environmental Challenges
[ sn ]

Provides a broad interdisciplinary introduction to environmental studies. Examines several key environmental challenges including climate change, biodiversity loss, water issues, and pollutants through an array of lenses from the natural and social sciences. Usually offered every year.

ENVS 107b Foundations of Global Environmental Diplomacy
[ oc ss ]

Examines international environmental diplomacy through a historical lens up to 1992. Specific topics range from wildlife conservation and transboundary air pollution to the trade in hazardous materials and climate change—along with many others. The course primarily aims to answer the overarching question: What can international actors do to protect the environment and environmental amenities? Usually offered every year.

ENVS 118b International Environmental Conflict and Cooperation
[ ss ]

Investigates environmental issues through the lens of international diplomacy from 1992 to the present day. Examines how diplomatic initiatives have—and importantly, have not—shaped the contemporary structure of international environmental relations as well as the severity of environmental threats. Usually offered every year.

ENVS 131b The Political Economy of Global Climate Governance
[ djw ss ]

Introduction to the  political economy of climate governance and its social justice implications, especially the perspectives and proposals from the global South (Latin America, Africa, and South Asia). This course will map, compare, and systematize different proposals based on the green economy to public ownership and control over common goods proposals like just transition and buen vivir. Students are encouraged to discuss and apply concepts to their own creative proposals for social interventions, developing their practice and skills for climate activism, engagement, and leadership. Usually offered every year.

FREN 111a The Republic
[ fl hum oc ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

The "Republic" analyzes how the republican ideal of the citizen devoid of religious, ethnic, or gender identity has fared in different Francophone political milieux. Course involves understanding how political institutions such as constitutions, parliaments, and court systems interact with reality of modern societies in which religious, ethnic, and gender identities play important roles. Usually offered every year.

FREN 151b Francophone Identities in a Global World: An Introduction to Francophone Literature
[ fl hum wi ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Introduces Francophone literature and film, retracing, through the works of great contemporary Francophone writers and directors, the evolution of the Francophone world, from the colonial struggles to the transcultural and transnational trajectories of our global era. Usually offered every second year.

HISP 192b Latin American Global Film
[ djw hum nw oc ]

May be taught in English or Spanish.

We will study the dynamic between local and global imagination and forces in the production, circulation, and reception of films from and/or about "Latin America." Local productions, traditional topics and genres are now refashioned for international audiences. Some film directors and actors have gained mainstream global visibility; U.S.-based ‘platforms’ finance local productions for international markets. How are all these new and old images and narratives mobilized? What are all these forces and projections doing? Analysis of visual representation and film techniques will be combined with an attention to socio-cultural backgrounds. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 52b Europe in the Modern World
[ oc ss ]

Explores European history from the Enlightenment to the present emphasizing how developments in Europe have shaped and been shaped by broader global contexts. Topics include: revolution, industrialization, political and social reforms, nationalism, imperialism, legacies of global wars, totalitarianism, and decolonization. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 56b Rethinking World History (to 1960)
[ djw nw ss ]

An introductory survey of world history, from the dawn of "civilization" to c.1960. Topics include the establishment and rivalry of political communities, the development of material life, and the historical formation of cultural identities. Usually offered every year.

HIST 109b A Global History of Sport: Politics, Economy, Race and Culture
[ deis-us djw nw oc ss ]

Examines soccer, boxing, baseball, cricket and other sports to reflect on culture, politics, race, and globalization. With a focus on empire, gender, ethnicity, this course considers sport as the battleground for ideological and group contests. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 111b The Iranian Revolution in Global Context
[ djw dl nw ss ]

The 1979 revolution in Iran was the last great revolution of the 20th century that reverberates until today. We examine the roots of that revolution, and the nature of the state and society that resulted from it within a broader global context. The first two units focus on pre-revolutionary and revolutionary Iran, particularly the 1960s and 1970s, examining national and global forces that laid the groundwork for the 1979 revolution.  We also analyze the multiple narratives of the revolution itself—as an Islamic movement, an anti-monarchical movement, and an anti-imperialist movement. In the final unit, we look at some of the characteristics of the Islamic Republic and the global tensions that have resulted from its specific historical development. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 113b Crazy Rich Europeans: Wealth and Inequality in Modern History
[ djw oc ss ]

Brings together insights from modern European and Asian history, business, economics, and sociology. We will investigate the changing role, power, and composition of social elites in history and how they impacted workers, colonial populations, women, and urban landscapes in the past two centuries. We will study how actors as diverse as fashion models, Russian oligarchs, and powerful bankers gain their status and influence. We will also discuss the origins of global social inequality, including the ‘great divergence’ debate on Chinese and European modernization. How do we get from ‘Crazy Rich Europeans’ to ‘Crazy Rich Asians’? Usually offered every year.

HIST 125b Europe in the Global Cold War
[ deis-us ss ]

Offers a thematic overview of the history of the post-1945 period in Europe’s East and West, and situates these histories in their global contexts, such as decolonization, environmental change (Chornobyl catastrophe) the struggle of the USSR and the US, the Vietnam War, and debates on the “end of history” around 1989. We will study how events that started in Eastern and East-Central Europe, such as the Russian Revolution, World War II, as well as the collapse of the Soviet Union triggered political and social changes in China, Southeast Asia, and other parts of the world. Through reading diplomatic correspondence, pamphlets, memoirs and literature written by dissidents, party members, and politicians, as well as by watching and reflecting on media footage, we will examine how the Cold War and 1989 ushered in a new world order that is here with us up to the present. The course also focuses on how European states East and West rebuilt ties with the “Global South” through socialist solidarity, development aid and investments, and how the Cold War shapes the institutions and politics of the European Union up to the present. Usually offered every year.

HIST 134b The Ottoman Empire: From Principality to Republic by way of Empire
[ ss ]

Starting around the year 1300, the Ottomans grew from a tiny principality into a global Islamic empire by 1550, and in 1923 transformed into the modern Republic of Turkey. Ottoman history is the history of southeastern Europe, Anatolia, the Middle East, and most of North Africa. This course explores the arc of this 600-year history as it considers what enabled the Ottomans to emerge and flourish, as well as the processes that eventually tore the empire apart. By the end of the course, students will appreciate Ottoman legacies to politics, economics, culture, art, language, and food that are local, regional and global, with a direct influence on over two dozen modern nations. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 135b Get Up, Stand Up: A Century of Revolutions in the Middle East
[ djw nw oc ss ]

An examination of the various revolutions that have shaped the modern Middle East since the late 19th century. The course focuses on four different revolutionary moments: The constitutional revolutions of the turn of the century, the anti-colonial revolutions of mid-century, the radical revolutions of the 1970's, and most recently, the Arab Spring revolutions that have affected the region since 2011. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 147a Russian Empire: Gender, Minorities, and Globalization
[ djw dl oc ss ]

Examines the processes and problems of modernization--state development, economic growth, social change, cultural achievements, and emergence of revolutionary and terrorist movements. Usually offered every year.

HIST 147b Twentieth-Century Russia: Revolution, Nationality, Global Power
[ dl oc ss ]

Russian history from the 1905 revolution to the present day, with particular emphasis on the Revolution of 1917, Stalinism, culture, and the decline and fall of the USSR. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 166a History of Crises: Europe's Twentieth Century
[ djw nw ss ]

Systematically tackles the main turning points of Western and Eastern Europe’s modern history and their global impact. The focus is on the first half of the twentieth century, and the histories of the First and Second World Wars that still shape contemporary world politics today. We will also touch on the histories of colonialism, totalitarianism, the Ukrainian famine under Stalin, the Holocaust, and "moral panics" around changing gender roles. Analyzes both primary sources and the most recent scholarly debates. Requirements include a book review and a short research paper. Usually offered every year.

HIST 179b India and the Superpowers (USA, USSR, and China): 1947 and Beyond
[ nw ss ]

Examines the history of modern India through its relationships with the "superpowers," USA, USSR, and China. Covering the period between 1947-2018, the course analyses ideological, economic, foreign policy shifts and subcontinental conflict in a constantly changing geo-political scene. Usually offered every second year.

Avinash Singh

HIST 182b Modern China
[ djw nw ss ]

Surveys Chinese history from the Ming to Mao, with an emphasis on political, social, cultural, and literary trends; and attention toward ethnic minorities and overseas communities and diaspora. Usually offered every year.

HIST 185a The China Outside China: Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Diaspora in the Making of Modern China
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Studies the history of Chinese outside Mainland China, from Hong Kong and Taiwan to Siberia and Africa, from fifteenth century to present day. Ambivalence to ancestral and adopted homelands made these communities valuable agents of transnational exchange and embodiments of Chinese modernity. Usually offered every third year.

HIST 185b Turkey: From Ataturk to Erdogan
[ djw ss ]

Examines the history of the Turkish Republic, from its founding in the wake of World War I until the beginning of the 21st century. Through discussions of politics, economics, society and culture, the course studies the forces that shaped and reshaped Turkey. Like the Ottoman Empire from which it emerged, Turkey has attracted the attention of admirers and detractors alike. Meanwhile, it has played key roles and continues to be an important economic, political and cultural hub in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and the world. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 187a Frenemy States: Identity and Integration in East Asia
[ ss wi ]

Examines the emergence and development of distinct national identities in East Asia. We focus upon key transformative moments and events in the histories of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam from the dawn of time to the early twentieth century. Usually offered every third year.

HIST 187b Unequal Histories: Caste, Religion, and Dissent in India
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Examines the religious, political, and social dimensions of discrimination in India. In order to study caste, power, and representation, we will look at religious texts, historical debates, film, and literature from the Vedic Age to contemporary India. Usually offered every second year.

HIST/IGS 180b Modern India: From Partition to the Present
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Examines the history, culture, and economy of modern India (1947-2019) with a focus on key concerns, such as the environment, urbanization, gender/sexual relations, and the transformations of democratic politics. Usually offered every second year.

HIST/JOUR 163a The Road to September 11th and Beyond: History and Media
[ djw oc ss ]

The September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center ushered in two U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and drained the U.S. Treasury of at least $8 trillion. 9/11 radically changed the dynamics between the U.S. and the Middle East, along with those between the press and military and government officials. Co-taught by a historian of modern Middle East and a journalist who extensively covered these events, this course aims to give students a fresh lens for examining the history and the aftermath of this crucial event from both a Middle Eastern and American perspective. Usually offered every second year.

HSSP 152b Introduction to Demography: Social Determinants of Health and Wellbeing
[ ss ]

Explores the social and health consequences of population dynamics within the U.S. and globally that affect wellbeing of families and nations including poverty and inequality, maternal and child health, aging, fertility and epidemiological transitions, workforce, immigration among other policy concerns. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 104a Seminar in International Order
[ oc ss wi ]

Prerequisites: IGS 8a and IGS 10A recommended.

Critically appraises the institutions known as the “international order.” We examine threats to this order and consider how it may evolve or erode with the renewed influence of rising powers and perturbations to the balance of power. Our interaction with the scholarly debate is interspersed with sessions on research methods to enable students to conduct research on related topics. Usually offered every year.

IGS 136b Contemporary Chinese Society and Culture
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Introduces students to contemporary Chinese society, with a focus on the rapid transformations that have taken place during the post-Mao era with a focus on family, gender, sexuality, migration, ethnicity, and family planning. Usually offered every third year.

IGS 138a China in the World
[ djw ss wi ]

This course examines China's role on the world stage. Looking at the history of China's interaction with the world, both at home and abroad, we will examine how China has affected, and been affected by, other societies and cultures. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 140a Styles of Globalization
[ ss wi ]

Why do some countries benefit from globalization while others lag behind? How do different nations balance issues such as free trade, foreign investment, and workers' rights? This course considers the real-world choices behind success and failure in the global economy. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 165a Revolution, Religion, and Terror: Postcolonial Histories
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Examines religious conflict, revolutionary violence, and civil war in modern South Asia. It looks at Jihad, Maoist militancy, rising fundamentalism, and political violence. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 171a The Asian Wave: Global Pop Culture and its Histories
[ djw ss ]

Asia is not only remaking itself but also exporting images and ideas across the world. This course explores how Asian pop culture shapes global modernity, as countries project their values and aspirations to a global audience through increasing connectivity. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 173a Asian Gangsters: Contemporary Crime Cinema
[ djw dl ss ]

Studies contemporary crime films to examine modern Asian society and politics. Drawing upon film theory, cultural studies, historical and sociological research, this class considers the world's largest media market to understand the continent's rapidly changing socio-political milieu. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 175a Digital Asia: Democracy in the Internet Age
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Analyzes the transformative potential of the internet as an agent of development and as a mechanism for disrupting social and political orders in Asia, home to the world's largest democracy and also the world's largest authoritarian regime. Usually offered every second year.

LGLS 125b International Law and Organizations
[ ss ]

Introduction to international law, its nature, sources, and application, for example, its role in the management of international conflicts. Topics may include international agreements, international organizations including the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, states and recognition, nationality and alien rights, territorial and maritime jurisdiction, international claims, and the laws of war and human rights. Usually offered every third year.

NEJS 104b Islam: Civilization and Institutions
[ hum nw ]

Provides a disciplined study of Islamic civilization from its origins to the modern period. Approaches the study from a humanities perspective. Topics covered will include the Qur'an, tradition, law, theology, politics, Islam and other religions, modern developments, and women in Islam. Usually offered every year.

NEJS 189a The Arab-Israeli Conflict
[ hum ss ]

Consideration of Arab-Jewish relations, attitudes, and interactions from 1880 to the present. Emphasis on social factors and intellectual currents and their impact on politics. Examines the conflict within its international setting. Usually offered every third year.

NEJS 189b Formative Moments in the Disputed Land of Israel-Palestine
[ djw hum ]

Examines the history of Israel/Palestine during the 20th century by focusing on several formative moments that took place pre and post 1948. It reexamines key issues that emerged around each of those events and explores the implications they had on the formation of Israeli and Palestinian societies. Usually offered every second year.

POL 129b Internet and Politics
[ dl ss ]

Prerequisite: POL 10a, POL 11b, POL 14b, or POL 15a.

Explores the effects of the Internet on politics and society. Covers issues of Internet governance and institutions, the rise of the global network economy, and the effects of the Internet on social identity. Contemporaneous events and issues such as the digital revolutions, the digital divide, fake news, and coordinated disinformation campaigns are also covered in detail. Usually offered every year.

POL 133b Politics of Russia and the Post Communist World
[ ss wi ]

Overview of the politics of Russia and the former Soviet world. Topics include the fall and legacy of communism, trends of democracy and dictatorship, European integration, resurgent nationalism, social and economic patterns throughout the former Soviet Bloc, and Putin's rise and influence both within Russia and abroad. Usually offered every year.

POL 134b Seminar: The Global Migration Crisis
[ djw ss wi ]

Looks at immigration from the perspectives of policy-makers, migrants, and the groups affected by immigration in sender nations as well as destination countries. Introduces students to the history of migration policy, core concepts and facts about migration in the West, and to the theories and disagreements among immigrant scholars. Usually offered every second year.

POL 137b Seminar: Psychology of Political Violence
[ dl ss ]

Why do people become terrorists? Social scientists argue that organizations use terrorism because it is a rational means for obtaining their objectives. But why do individuals sacrifice themselves for a cause? Drawing on behavioral economics and criminal psychology in addition to political sociology, the course will review new approaches to the study of extreme political violence. Usually offered every year.

POL 139a Seminar: The Radical Right: From Ballots to Bullets
[ deis-us oc ss wi ]

Radical right and far-right are umbrella terms used to refer to political parties and militant subcultures that differentiate themselves from mainstream conservatism. Students will be introduced to case studies of far-right groups and parties in Western Europe and the United States. We will discuss their ideologies and tactics, the different subcultures and the legal restraints that countries have used to control extremist groups linked to violence. Students will also learn about political science theories about the causes of far-right extremism. Usually offered every second year.

POL 141a Seminar: Elections and Electoral Systems in Comparative Perspective
[ djw dl ss wi ]

Introduces students to the scientific study of elections and electoral systems from a comparative standpoint. Students will be exposed to social scientific literature on elections, analyze these processes from a comparative perspective, and learn how to use digital tools, such as ArcGIS and online mapping software (GIS) to analyze electoral processes. Usually offered every year.

POL 144a Latin American Politics
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Examines the development and deepening of democracy in Latin America, focusing on the role of political institutions, economic development, the military, and U.S.-Latin American relations. Usually offered every year.

POL 148b Seminar: Dynamics of Dictatorship: Authoritarian Politics in the 20th and 21st Centuries
[ oc ss ]

Prerequisite: POL 11b.

Despite the world-wide advance of democratization over the past half century, authoritarian regimes continue to govern the vast majority of humanity around the world. Dynamics of Dictatorship aims to provide an analytic grounding in the logic and dynamics of authoritarian politics. What are the different flavors of authoritarian rule? How do authoritarian regimes sustain their control over society? Why do most people obey? How and when do people resist? Has technological advance enhanced the power of authoritarian regimes? What role do international forces play in authoritarian regime survival? When do authoritarian regimes collapse? This course will explore leading theoretical research on authoritarian politics and it will ground that theory in historical and contemporary cases of authoritarian rule found in Russia, Germany, Venezuela, Chile, China, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Zaire, Zimbabwe, and beyond. Usually offered every second year.

POL 156b European Politics
[ ss ]

The comparative politics of Western Europe. Focuses on the development of political parties and social movements in Britain, France, and Germany--particularly since 1945--to determine how they affect policies and the citizenry's participation in modern democracies. Usually offered every third year.

POL 160a The War on Global Terrorism
[ dl ss ]

Intended for juniors and seniors, but open to all students.

Explores how 9/11 changed our lives. The course surveys the build-up of Al Queda leading up to the 9/11 attacks and ten years of counter terrorism. Students are given an introduction to Jihadist doctrines and Al Queda's structure, as well as theories about the cause of terrorism. Usually offered every year.

POL 161b Good Neighbor or Imperial Power: The Contested Evolution of US-Latin American Relations
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Studies the ambivalent and complex relationship between the U.S. and Latin America, focusing on how the exploitative dimension of this relationship has shaped societies across the region, and on how Latin American development can be beneficial for the U.S. Usually offered every year.

POL 163a Seminar: The United Nations and the United States
[ djw dl ss wi ]

Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

Investigates the United Nations organization and charter, with an emphasis on the integral role of the United States in its founding and operation. Using archival documents and other materials, explores topics such as UN enforcement actions, the Security Council veto, human rights, and the domestic politics of US commitments to the UN. Usually offered every year.

POL 164a Seminar: Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and Peacemaking
[ ss ]

Spans the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, from the origins of Zionism and Palestinian nationalism in the late 19th century to the Hamas-Israel war that began on October 7, 2023. Uniquely co-taught by two scholars, one Palestinian and one Israeli, the class exposes students to competing perspectives about the conflict and provides a toolbox for explaining its causes and consequences. As the class is conducted seminar-style, student participation is expected and encouraged. Usually offered every year.

POL 165a Seminar: Dilemmas of Security Cooperation
[ dl ss wi ]

States regularly cooperate in the security domain. They can choose to band together in alliances, rely on stronger states for defense, or improve weaker actors' capacity to fight or defend themselves by providing arms and training. Security cooperation is a major feature of international relations, with powerful actors like the United States spending billions each year on efforts to arm, equip, and train partner militaries around the world. But security cooperation contains many dilemmas where states face difficult choices between alternatives without clear answers. Efforts to increase security can lead to unintended consequences, both for states and for the people who live in them. This course explores different dilemmas across a range of topics, considering both the causes and consequences of security cooperation. Topics include alliances, proxy warfare, arms transfers and military aid, peacekeeping, and security outcomes ranging from combat effectiveness to political violence and human rights. Usually offered every third year.

POL 167b Russian Foreign Policy
[ oc ss wi ]

Surveys Russian foreign policy in the contemporary world, with particular attention paid to the deep historical context for its attitudes and goals in international relations. Topics include relations with the larger post-communist region, the Muslim world, its ongoing antagonistic relations with America and the West, the rise of disinformation warfare on the internet, in addition to the distinct Russian perspective on geopolitics. Usually offered every year.

POL 170a Seminar: Nuclear Weapons and International Security
[ ss ]

Examines the role of nuclear weapons in international relations from World War II to the present.   We will cover the technology of nuclear weapons, the development of nuclear strategy and doctrine, arms control and nonproliferation efforts, and the spread of nuclear weapons beyond the Western powers (the U.S., Russia, United Kingdom and France) to the Middle East and Asia, including China, India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea.  Usually offered every year. 

SOC 124a Gender, Sexuality, and Globalization
[ djw oc ss ]

Introduces theories of gender, sexuality, and transnational feminism. Uses sociological research to examine labor, social movements, politics, and culture in global perspective, emphasizing Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 127a Religion, Ethnicity, and Nationalism
[ nw oc ss ]

Examines three sources of identity that are influential in global affairs: religion, ethnicity and nationalism. Considers theories of the relationship among these identities, especially "secularization theory," then reviews historical examples such as Poland, Iran, India, and Pakistan. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 146b Nationalism and Globalization
[ ss wi ]

In an age of globalization, why does nationalism thrive? Are globalization and nationalism rivals, strangers or possibly partners? Students will trace the emergence of nationalism while also examining globalization's impact on societies such as the United States, Russia, China, and India. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 162a Intellectuals and Revolutionary Politics
[ ss ]

Can you change a society by changing its culture? How do writers, painters, and bloggers give their countries new visions of justice -- or even revenge? This class studies the ideas behind revolutions, who creates them, and why. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 168a Democracy and Inequality in Global Perspective
[ ss ]

Can democracy survive great inequalities of wealth and status? In authoritarian countries, does inequality inspire revolution or obedience? What role does culture play in determining which inequalities are tolerable and which are not? Cases usually include the United States, India, and China. Usually offered every second year.

AAAS 125b Caribbean Women and Globalization: Sexuality, Citizenship, Work
[ ss wi ]

Utilizing perspectives from sociology, anthropology, fiction, and music to examine the relationship between women's sexuality and conceptions of labor, citizenship, and sovereignty. The course considers these alongside conceptions of masculinity, contending feminisms, and the global perspective. Usually offered every second year.

AAAS 127a African Refugees
[ djw ss ]

An in-depth study of African refugees in dynamic contexts, and their centrality to the understanding and analysis of key issues in the politics, history, and international relations of African States. Usually offered every year.

AAAS 134b Novel and Film of the African Diaspora
[ djw hum nw ]

Writers and filmmakers, who are usually examined separately under national or regional canonical categories such as "(North) American," "Latin American," "African," "British," or "Caribbean," are brought together here to examine transnational identities and investments in "authentic," "African," or "black" identities. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 139b Language, Ethnicity, and Nationalism
[ ss ]

Explores the relationships between communication and community, and the ways language helps to shape social categories such as ethnic group, tribe, race, and nation. What role does language play in producing experiences of belonging and difference? A key component of this course will be exploring the relationship between language and culture. This course will consider a range of global cases, from large-scale projects like language standardization to smaller-scale community practices like code-switching, inflection, and slang to investigate the relationship between how we speak, who we are, and where we feel we belong. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 140a Human Rights in Global Perspective
[ djw ss wi ]

Explores a range of debates about human rights as a concept as well as the practice of human rights work. The human rights movement seeks the recognition of universal norms that transcend political and cultural difference while anthropology seeks to explore and analyze the great diversity of human life. To what extent can these two goals--advocating for universal norms and respecting cultural difference--be reconciled? The course examines cases from various parts of the world concerning: indigenous peoples, environment, health, gender, genocide/violence/nation-states and globalization. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 140b Critical Perspectives in Global Health
[ deis-us djw nw ss ]

What value systems and other sociocultural factors underlie global public health policy? How can anthropology shed light on debates about the best ways to improve health outcomes? This course examines issues from malaria to HIV/AIDS, from tobacco cessation to immunization. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 142b Global Pandemics: History, Society, and Policy
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Takes a biosocial approach to pandemics like HIV/AIDS, SARS, Ebola, and COVID-19 as shaped by culture, economics, politics, and history. Discussion focuses on how gender, sexuality, religion, and folk practices shape pandemic situations. Usually offered every fourth year.

ANTH 144a The Anthropology of Gender
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Anthropology majors have priority for enrollment.

Explores gender, sexuality, and cultural systems from a comparative perspective. Topics may include rituals of masculinity and femininity, the vexing question of the universality of women's subordination, culturally-specific classifications of sexual orientation and gender identity, transnational feminisms, sex work, migrant labor, reproductive rights, and much more. Usually offered every year.

ANTH 150a Environmental Justice in Global Perspective
[ djw ss ]

Explores anthropological and humanistic approaches to understanding human-environment interactions, the global climate crisis, and environmental justice and climate justice movements highlighting how ecological crises have disproportionately impacted the poor, women and children, and Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. Key themes include: cultural understandings of “nature” and the “environment;” the cultural politics of race, indigeneity, and nature; militarism, empire, and the environment; feminist, queer and decolonial ecologies; Asian American and Pacific Islander environmental justice movements; and perspectives on the global climate crisis and the Anthropocene from the Global South. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 178b Culture, Gender and Power in East Asia
[ nw ss wi ]

Examines the role of culture in changing gender power relations in East Asia by exploring how the historical legacy of Confucianism in the region influences the impact of changes such as the constitutional proclamation of gender equality and rapid industrialization. Usually offered every third year.

ECON 175a Introduction to the Economics of Development
[ djw ss wi ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a or permission of the instructor. Does not count toward the upper-level elective requirement for the major in economics.

An introduction to various models of economic growth and development and evaluation of these perspectives from the experience of developing and industrial countries. Usually offered every second year.

ECON 176a Health, Hunger, and the Household in Developing Countries
[ djw nw ss ]

Prerequisites: ECON 80a and ECON 184b or permission of the instructor.

Examines aspects of poverty and nutrition that are confronted by households in low-income countries. Examines these issues primarily from a microeconomic perspective, although some macroeconomic angles are explored as well. Usually offered every second year.

ENG 52a Refugee Stories, Refugee Lives
[ deis-us djw dl hum nw oc ]

Yields 6 credits.

Examines the functions of storytelling in the refugee crisis. Its main objective is to further students' understanding of the political dimensions of storytelling. The course explores how reworking of reality enable people to question State and social structures. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 62b Contemporary African Literature, Global Perspectives
[ djw dl hum nw oc ]

What is "African" in African literature when the majority of writers are somehow removed from the African societies they portray? How do expatriate writers represent African subjectivities and cultures at the intersection of Diaspora and globalization? Who reads the works produced by these writers? Usually offered every third year.

ENG 111b Postcolonial Theory
[ djw hum wi ]

Introduces students to key concepts in postcolonial theory. Traces the consequences of European colonialism for politics, culture and literature around the world, situates these within ongoing contemporary debates, and considers the usefulness of postcolonial theory for understanding the world today. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 127b Migrating Bodies, Migrating Texts
[ djw hum nw ]

Beginning with the region's representation as a tabula rasa, examines the textual and visual constructions of the Caribbean as colony, homeland, backyard, paradise, and Babylon, and how the region's migrations have prompted ideas about evolution, hedonism, imperialism, nationalism, and diaspora. Usually offered every second year.

ENG 137b Women and War
[ djw dl hum nw ]

Examines how African women writers and filmmakers use testimony to bear witness to mass violence. How do these writers resist political and sociocultural silencing systems that reduce traumatic experience to silence, denial, and terror? Usually offered every third year.

ENVS 111a Environmental and Climate Justice
[ deis-us djw ss ]

Introduces the major concepts and debates related to the unequal effects of climate change, including those of the ongoing efforts to combat climate change. We also explore several proposed programs and reforms meant to contribute to the goals of environmental and climate justice, including the social activists and movements working toward addressing social, economic, and political inequalities within ongoing efforts to address climate change. Usually offered every year.

ENVS 112b Governing the Environmental Commons
[ deis-us djw ss wi ]

Introduction to the diverse meanings, forms, and claims about commons; theories and debates about sustainable governance of the commons. Learn about the histories of dispossessions, and ongoing collective actions and mobilizations to reclaim the commons for environmental & climate justice and ecological stewardship. Usually offered every year.

FREN 139a Bad Girls and Boys: Du mauvais genre
[ fl hum ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Through a selection of literary texts, articles, images and films, students will explore how works from the Middle Ages to present day depict male and female figures in the French and Francophone world who have failed to conform to expectations of their gender. Usually offered every second year.

FREN 161a The Enigma of Being Oneself: From Du Bellay to Laferrière
[ djw fl hum wi ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Explores the relationship of identity formation and modern individualism in texts by writers working in France, Francophone Africa and Canada. Authors range from modern and contemporary writers Sarah Kofman, Dany Laferrière, Achille Mbembe, Alain Mabanckou, and Edouard Glissant to early-modern writers like Joachim Du Bellay and Michel de Montaigne. Usually offered every year.

HISP 142b Literature, Film, and Human Rights in Latin America
[ djw fl hum nw wi ]

Prerequisite: HISP 109b or HISP 111b, or instructor permission.

Examines literature, film (fiction and non-fiction), and other artistic expressions from Latin America, in conversation with the idea of human rights from the colonial arguments about slavery and the "natural rights" of the indigenous, to the advent of human rights in the context of post-conflict truth and reconciliation processes, to the emergence of gender and ethnicity as into the human rights framework, to the current debates about rights of nature in the midst of a global ecological crisis. Usually offered every third year.

HIST 71a Latin American and Caribbean History I: Colonialism, Slavery, Freedom
[ djw hum nw ss ]

Studies colonialism in Latin America and Caribbean, focusing on coerced labor and struggles for freedom as defining features of the period: conquest; Indigenous, African, and Asian labor; colonial institutions and economics; Independence and revolutionary movements. Usually offered every year.

HIST 71b Latin American and Caribbean History II: Modernity, Medicine, Sexuality
[ djw hum nw ss ]

Studies the idea of "modernity" in Latin America and Caribbean, centered on roles of health and human reproduction in definitions of the "modern" citizen: post-slavery labor, race and national identity; modern politics and economics; transnational relations. Usually offered every year.

HIST 109b A Global History of Sport: Politics, Economy, Race and Culture
[ deis-us djw nw oc ss ]

Examines soccer, boxing, baseball, cricket and other sports to reflect on culture, politics, race, and globalization. With a focus on empire, gender, ethnicity, this course considers sport as the battleground for ideological and group contests. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 135b Get Up, Stand Up: A Century of Revolutions in the Middle East
[ djw nw oc ss ]

An examination of the various revolutions that have shaped the modern Middle East since the late 19th century. The course focuses on four different revolutionary moments: The constitutional revolutions of the turn of the century, the anti-colonial revolutions of mid-century, the radical revolutions of the 1970's, and most recently, the Arab Spring revolutions that have affected the region since 2011. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 136b Global War and Revolutions in the Eighteenth Century
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Surveys global conflicts and revolutions and examines exchanges of idea, peoples, and goods in the eighteenth-century Atlantic World. Explores the legacies of inter-imperial rivalry and the intellectual borrowings and innovations of the American, French, and Haitian revolutions in comparative perspective. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 178b Britain and India: Connected Histories
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Surveys the history of Britain and India from the rise of the East India Company to the present. Explores cultural and economic exchanges; shifts in power and phases of imperial rule; resistance and collaboration; nationalism; decolonization and partition; and postcolonial legacies. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 184b Swashbuckling Adventurers or Sea Bandits? The Chinese Pirate in Global Perspective
[ nw ss wi ]

Explores the commercial role, political economy, social structure, and national imaginations of the Chinese pirate situated in both world history and in comparison to "piracies" elsewhere. Usually offered every third year.

HIST 187b Unequal Histories: Caste, Religion, and Dissent in India
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Examines the religious, political, and social dimensions of discrimination in India. In order to study caste, power, and representation, we will look at religious texts, historical debates, film, and literature from the Vedic Age to contemporary India. Usually offered every second year.

HIST/IGS 180b Modern India: From Partition to the Present
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Examines the history, culture, and economy of modern India (1947-2019) with a focus on key concerns, such as the environment, urbanization, gender/sexual relations, and the transformations of democratic politics. Usually offered every second year.

HIST/SOC 170b Gender and Sexuality in South Asia
[ djw nw ss ]

Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or permission of the instructor.

Explores historical and contemporary debates about gender and sexuality in South Asia; revisits concepts of "woman," "sex," "femininity," "home," "family," "community," "nation," "reform," "protection," and "civilization" across the colonial and postcolonial periods. Usually offered every second year.

HS 110a Labor, Work, and Inequality
[ ss ]

Examines what economic and social factors drive inequality in terms of conditions at work, from wages to discrimination to worker voice, and how these conditions are connected to business decisions, government policies, union and worker advocacy, and worker norms and beliefs. Usually offered every year.

HSSP 152b Introduction to Demography: Social Determinants of Health and Wellbeing
[ ss ]

Explores the social and health consequences of population dynamics within the U.S. and globally that affect wellbeing of families and nations including poverty and inequality, maternal and child health, aging, fertility and epidemiological transitions, workforce, immigration among other policy concerns. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 108a Seminar in Law, Justice, and Human Rights
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Explores international justice and human rights regimes along with concepts and prominent theories that inform the field. We examine specific cases carried out in different national settings and critique the utility and efficacy of international human rights institutions. Usually offered every year.

IGS 110a Religion and Secularism in French & Francophone Culture
[ hum ss ]

Tackles the persistent power of religion in France and its former colonies despite common ideals of secular nationalism. Through literature and film we will study the historical and contemporary cultural wars waged around the French notion of 'laïcité' -- its confrontation with Islam, but also the experiences of Jews, Catholics, and Protestants.

IGS 130a Crossing Borders: Mobility and Displacement in a Global Age
[ ss ]

Introduces students to the social, cultural, religious, political, and economic forces that shape global migration today. We follow migration flows across borders and assess their implications for the migrant, the state, and the global economy. Case studies include refugees and asylees whose rights are protected by international law. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 165a Revolution, Religion, and Terror: Postcolonial Histories
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Examines religious conflict, revolutionary violence, and civil war in modern South Asia. It looks at Jihad, Maoist militancy, rising fundamentalism, and political violence. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 171a The Asian Wave: Global Pop Culture and its Histories
[ djw ss ]

Asia is not only remaking itself but also exporting images and ideas across the world. This course explores how Asian pop culture shapes global modernity, as countries project their values and aspirations to a global audience through increasing connectivity. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 173a Asian Gangsters: Contemporary Crime Cinema
[ djw dl ss ]

Studies contemporary crime films to examine modern Asian society and politics. Drawing upon film theory, cultural studies, historical and sociological research, this class considers the world's largest media market to understand the continent's rapidly changing socio-political milieu. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 175a Digital Asia: Democracy in the Internet Age
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Analyzes the transformative potential of the internet as an agent of development and as a mechanism for disrupting social and political orders in Asia, home to the world's largest democracy and also the world's largest authoritarian regime. Usually offered every second year.

IGS/LGLS 128b Networks of Global Justice
[ ss ]

Examines how global justice is actively shaped by dynamic institutions, contested ideas, and evolving cultures. Using liberal arts methods, the course explores prospects for advancing peace and justice in a complex world. It is organized around case studies of humanitarian crises, involving health, poverty, migration, and peace-building across nations. Usually offered every third year.

LGLS 123b Immigration and Human Rights
[ deis-us ss ]

Examines U.S. immigration practices policy in the context of international human rights treaties, social movements, historical dynamics, political struggles, and global practices, with some attention to other states' immigration policies. This course focuses on the how the daily interactions of societal institutions and roles is continuously constructing immigration and human rights systems and ideas. As such, much of the class work in this course involves practical exercises in which students experience the decision making and roles of human rights lawyers, organizers and policy leaders in the context of current social and cultural controversies, ideologies, and events. So, students will be introduced to the generally applicable skills, concepts, values, and attitudes involved in human rights litigation, movement organizing, and policy making. This course explores tensions between social movements, domestic politics, and international law in guiding immigration reform, and challenges students to assess the sources of rights and the winners and losers (in terms of efficacy and accountability) of rights talk. Usually offered every spring.

LGLS 124b Comparative Law and Development
[ djw nw ss ]

Surveys legal systems across the world with special application to countries in the process of political, social, or economic transition. Examines constitutional and rule-of-law principles in the context of developing global networks. Usually offered every second year.

LGLS 125b International Law and Organizations
[ ss ]

Introduction to international law, its nature, sources, and application, for example, its role in the management of international conflicts. Topics may include international agreements, international organizations including the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, states and recognition, nationality and alien rights, territorial and maritime jurisdiction, international claims, and the laws of war and human rights. Usually offered every third year.

LGLS 129a Transitional Justice: Global Justice and Societies in Transition
[ djw ss ]

Introduces transitional justice, a set of practices that arise following a period of conflict that aim directly at confronting past violations of human rights. This course will focus on criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations, memorials, and the contributions of art and culture. Usually offered every year.

NEJS 138a Genocide and Mass Killing in the Twentieth Century
[ hum ]

An interdisciplinary seminar examining history and sociology of the internationally punishable crime of genocide, with the focus on theory, prevention, and punishment of genocide. Case studies include Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, Stalin's Russia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda. Usually offered every second year.

NEJS 144a Jews in the World of Islam
[ hum nw ]

Examines social and cultural history of Jewish communities in the Islamic world. Special emphasis is placed on the pre-modern Jewish communities. Usually offered every second year.

POL 128a The Politics of Revolution: State Violence and Popular Insurgency in the Third World
[ nw ss ]

Introduction to twentieth-century revolutionary movements in the Third World, focusing on the emergence of peasant-based resistance and revolution in the world beyond the West, and on the role of state violence in provoking popular involvement in protest, rebellion, and insurgency. Usually offered every year.

POL 137b Seminar: Psychology of Political Violence
[ dl ss ]

Why do people become terrorists? Social scientists argue that organizations use terrorism because it is a rational means for obtaining their objectives. But why do individuals sacrifice themselves for a cause? Drawing on behavioral economics and criminal psychology in addition to political sociology, the course will review new approaches to the study of extreme political violence. Usually offered every year.

POL 184a Seminar: Global Justice
[ djw ss wi ]

Prerequisites: One course in Political Theory or Moral, Social and Political Philosophy.

Explores the development of the topic of global justice and its contents. Issues to be covered include international distributive justice, duties owed to the global poor, humanitarian intervention, the ethics of climate change, and immigration. Usually offered every second year.

WGS 5a Women, Genders, and Sexualities
[ deis-us dl oc ss ]

This interdisciplinary course introduces central concepts and topics in the field of women's, gender, and sexuality studies. Explores the position of women and other genders in diverse settings and the impact of gender as a social, cultural, and intellectual category in the United States and around the globe. Asks how gendered institutions, behaviors, and representations have been configured in the past and function in the present, and also examines the ways in which gender and sexuality intersect with many other vectors of identity and circumstance in forming human affairs. Usually offered every fall.

WGS 105b Feminisms: History, Theory, and Practice
[ deis-us oc ss ]

Prerequisite: Students are encouraged, though not required, to take WGS 5a prior to enrolling in this course.

Examines diverse theories of sex and gender within a multicultural framework, considering historical changes in feminist thought, the theoretical underpinnings of various feminist practices, and the implications of diverse and often conflicting theories for both academic inquiry and social change. Usually offered every year.

WGS 108a Ecofeminism and Climate Justice Activism
[ ss wi ]

From local activism to regional and national fights against militarization and deforestation to broader movement organizing, education, and international politics, this class aims to showcase how ecofeminists and ecowomanists nurture and grow resilience in times of multiple crises through employing “a radical political orientation grounded in solidarity, rather than sameness, as an organizing principle.” Usually offered every second year.

AMST 30b American Environmental History
[ ss wi ]

Provides an overview of the relationship between nature and culture in North America. Covers Native Americans, the European invasion, the development of a market system of resource extraction and consumption, the impact of industrialization, and environmentalist responses. Current environmental issues are placed in historical context. Usually offered every year.

AMST 106b Food and Farming in America
[ ss wi ]

Yields four semester-hour credits towards rate of work and graduation.

American food is abundant and cheap. Yet many eat poorly, and some argue that our agriculture may be unhealthy and unsustainable. Explores the history of American farming and diet and the prospects for a healthy food system. Includes extensive fieldwork. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 55a Anthropology of Development
[ nw ss ]

Examines efforts to address global poverty that are typically labeled as "development." Privileging the perspectives of ordinary people, and looking carefully at the institutions involved in development, the course relies on ethnographic case studies that will draw students into the complexity of global inequality. Broad development themes such as public health, agriculture, the environment, democracy, poverty, and entrepreneurship will be explored. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 70a Business, Culture and Society
[ ss ]

In a diverse and rapidly changing global marketplace, it is crucial to understand local traditions, customs and cultural preferences. In this course, we adopt anthropological approaches to understand their impact on business practices, products, services, clients and ideas. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 127a Medicine, Body, and Culture
[ djw nw ss ]

Examines main areas of inquiry in medical anthropology, including medicine as a sociocultural construct, political and economic dimensions of suffering and health, patients and healers in comparative medical systems. Usually offered every year.

ANTH 140b Critical Perspectives in Global Health
[ deis-us djw nw ss ]

What value systems and other sociocultural factors underlie global public health policy? How can anthropology shed light on debates about the best ways to improve health outcomes? This course examines issues from malaria to HIV/AIDS, from tobacco cessation to immunization. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 142b Global Pandemics: History, Society, and Policy
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Takes a biosocial approach to pandemics like HIV/AIDS, SARS, Ebola, and COVID-19 as shaped by culture, economics, politics, and history. Discussion focuses on how gender, sexuality, religion, and folk practices shape pandemic situations. Usually offered every fourth year.

ANTH 150a Environmental Justice in Global Perspective
[ djw ss ]

Explores anthropological and humanistic approaches to understanding human-environment interactions, the global climate crisis, and environmental justice and climate justice movements highlighting how ecological crises have disproportionately impacted the poor, women and children, and Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. Key themes include: cultural understandings of “nature” and the “environment;” the cultural politics of race, indigeneity, and nature; militarism, empire, and the environment; feminist, queer and decolonial ecologies; Asian American and Pacific Islander environmental justice movements; and perspectives on the global climate crisis and the Anthropocene from the Global South. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 163b Economies and Culture
[ djw nw ss ]

Prerequisite: ANTH 1a, ECON 2a, ECON 10a, or permission of the instructor.

We read in newspapers and books and hear in everyday discussion about "the economy," an identifiably separate sphere of human life with its own rules and principles and its own scholarly discipline (economics). The class starts with the premise that this "common sense" idea of the economy is only one among a number of possible perspectives on the ways people use resources to meet their basic and not-so-basic human needs. In the course, we draw on cross-cultural examples, and take a look at the cultural aspects of finance, corporations, and markets. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 164a Medicine and Religion
[ djw nw ss ]

Considers the convergence of two cultural spheres that are normally treated as separate: medicine and religion. The course will examine their overlap, such as in healing and dying, as well as points of contention through historical and contemporary global ethnographies. Usually offered every second year.

BIOL 17b Conservation Biology
[ sn ]

Prerequisite: BIOL 16a or ENVS 2a.

Considers the current worldwide loss of biological diversity, causes of this loss, and methods for protecting and conserving biodiversity. Explores the science of conservation focused on the biological aspects of the problems and their solutions. Usually offered every year.

BIOL 23a Ecology
[ sn ]

Prerequisites: BIOL 16a, or a score of 5 on the AP Biology Exam, or permission of the instructor.

Illustrates the science of ecology, from individual, population, and community-level perspectives. Includes participatory science ecological research to contextualize theory. Usually offered every year.

BIOL 134b Topics in Ecology
[ oc sn ]

Prerequisites: BIOL 23a, or permission of the instructor. Topics may vary from year to year. Please consult the Course Schedule for topic and description. Course may be repeated once for credit with permission of the instructor.

Annually, a different aspect of the global biosphere is selected for analysis. In any year the focus may be on specific ecosystems (e.g., terrestrial, aquatic, tropical, arctic), populations, system modeling, restoration ecology, or other aspects of ecology. Usually offered every year.

CHEM 33a Environmental Chemistry
[ sn ]

Prerequisite: A satisfactory grade (C- or higher) in CHEM 11b or 15b or the equivalent.

The course surveys the important chemical principles and reactions that determine the balance of the molecular species in the environment and how human activity affects this balance. The class evaluates current issues of environmental concern such as ozone depletion, global warming, sustainable energy, toxic chemicals, water pollution, and green chemistry. Usually offered every year.

ECON 30a The Economy of China
[ nw ss ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a.

Analysis of China's economic transformation with particular emphasis on China's economic reforms since 1978, including the restructuring of its enterprise, fiscal, financial, and political systems and the roles of trade, foreign investment, and technology in driving China's economic advance. Usually offered every year.

ECON 57a Environmental Economics
[ oc ss ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a.

Investigates the theoretical and policy problems posed by the use of renewable and nonrenewable resources. Theoretical topics include the optimal pricing of resources, the optimal use of standards and taxes to correct pollution problems under uncertainty, and the measurement of costs and benefits. Usually offered every year.

ECON 65b Governance, Bureaucracy, and Economic Development
[ djw ss wi ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a.

Analyzes the role of institutions, governance, and bureaucracy in economic development. Topics include transaction costs, role of institutions, governance performance indicators, causes and consequences of corruption, anti-corruption policies, principal-agent theory and bureaucratic behavior. The course also includes a detailed case study on the role of governance and bureaucratic reforms in China's economic success since 1980. Usually offered every second year.

ECON 122b The Economics of the Middle East
[ nw ss wi ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a or the equivalent. Does not count toward the upper-level elective requirement for the major in economics.

Examines the Middle East economies ' past experiences, present situation, and future challenges ' drawing on theories, policy formulations and empirical studies of economic growth, trade, poverty, income distribution, labor markets, finance and banking, government reforms, globalization, and Arab-Israeli political economy. Usually offered every year.

ECON 136b Economics of Digitization
[ oc ss ]

Prerequisites: ECON 80a and ECON 184b.

Studies how technological advances fundamentally change how markets function, leading to novel firm strategies and consumer harms. Topics include: pricing digital goods, review/ratings platforms, advertising, search platforms, resale of digital goods, etc. Usually offered every year.

ECON 141b Economics of Innovation
[ ss ]

Prerequisites: ECON 80a and ECON 83a or permission of the instructor.

Studies innovation and technological change as the central focus of modern economies. Topics include the sources of growth, economics of research and development, innovation, diffusion and technology transfer, appropriability, patents, information markets, productivity, institutional innovation, and global competitiveness. Usually offered every year.

ECON 160a International Trade Theory
[ ss ]

Prerequisites: ECON 80a and ECON 83a or permission of the instructor.

Causes and consequences of international trade and factor movements. Topics include determinants of trade, effects on welfare and income distribution, trade and growth, protection, foreign investment, immigration, and preferential trading. Usually offered every year.

ECON 172b Money and Banking
[ ss wi ]

Prerequisites: ECON 82b and ECON 83a or permission of the instructor.

Examines the relationship of the financial system to real economic activity, focusing especially on banks and central banks. Topics include the monetary and payments systems; financial instruments and their pricing; the structure, management, and regulation of bank and nonbank financial intermediaries; and the design and operations of central banks in a modern economy. Usually offered every year.

ECON 175a Introduction to the Economics of Development
[ djw ss wi ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a or permission of the instructor. Does not count toward the upper-level elective requirement for the major in economics.

An introduction to various models of economic growth and development and evaluation of these perspectives from the experience of developing and industrial countries. Usually offered every second year.

ECON 176a Health, Hunger, and the Household in Developing Countries
[ djw nw ss ]

Prerequisites: ECON 80a and ECON 184b or permission of the instructor.

Examines aspects of poverty and nutrition that are confronted by households in low-income countries. Examines these issues primarily from a microeconomic perspective, although some macroeconomic angles are explored as well. Usually offered every second year.

ENVS 2a Fundamentals of Environmental Challenges
[ sn ]

Provides a broad interdisciplinary introduction to environmental studies. Examines several key environmental challenges including climate change, biodiversity loss, water issues, and pollutants through an array of lenses from the natural and social sciences. Usually offered every year.

ENVS 49a Conservation Politics
[ djw nw ss ]

Examines theories and practices of nature conservation from interdisciplinary social science and humanistic perspectives. Surveys a range of moral, political, cultural and economic dilemmas facing conservationists. Explores ways to balance competing ethical imperatives to protect biodiversity and respect human rights. Usually offered every year.

ENVS 107b Foundations of Global Environmental Diplomacy
[ oc ss ]

Examines international environmental diplomacy through a historical lens up to 1992. Specific topics range from wildlife conservation and transboundary air pollution to the trade in hazardous materials and climate change—along with many others. The course primarily aims to answer the overarching question: What can international actors do to protect the environment and environmental amenities? Usually offered every year.

ENVS 111a Environmental and Climate Justice
[ deis-us djw ss ]

Introduces the major concepts and debates related to the unequal effects of climate change, including those of the ongoing efforts to combat climate change. We also explore several proposed programs and reforms meant to contribute to the goals of environmental and climate justice, including the social activists and movements working toward addressing social, economic, and political inequalities within ongoing efforts to address climate change. Usually offered every year.

ENVS 112b Governing the Environmental Commons
[ deis-us djw ss wi ]

Introduction to the diverse meanings, forms, and claims about commons; theories and debates about sustainable governance of the commons. Learn about the histories of dispossessions, and ongoing collective actions and mobilizations to reclaim the commons for environmental & climate justice and ecological stewardship. Usually offered every year.

ENVS 118b International Environmental Conflict and Cooperation
[ ss ]

Investigates environmental issues through the lens of international diplomacy from 1992 to the present day. Examines how diplomatic initiatives have—and importantly, have not—shaped the contemporary structure of international environmental relations as well as the severity of environmental threats. Usually offered every year.

FA 181a Housing and Social Justice
[ ca deis-us dl ss ]

Employs housing as a lens to interrogate space and society, state and market, power and change, in relation with urban inequality and social justice. It trains students to become participants in the global debates about housing. In doing so, it teaches students about dominant paradigms of urban development and welfare and situates such paradigms in the 20th century history of capitalism. It will explicitly adopt a comparative and transnational urban approach to housing and social justice, showing how a globalized perspective provides important insights into local shelter struggles and debates. Usually offered every second year.

GECS 188b Human/Nature: European Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and What to Do About It
[ djw hum oc wi ]

Open to all students.

Introduces European attitudes towards climate change as reflected in policy, literature, film, and art, with a focus on workable future-oriented alternatives to fossil-fueled capitalism. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 113b Crazy Rich Europeans: Wealth and Inequality in Modern History
[ djw oc ss ]

Brings together insights from modern European and Asian history, business, economics, and sociology. We will investigate the changing role, power, and composition of social elites in history and how they impacted workers, colonial populations, women, and urban landscapes in the past two centuries. We will study how actors as diverse as fashion models, Russian oligarchs, and powerful bankers gain their status and influence. We will also discuss the origins of global social inequality, including the ‘great divergence’ debate on Chinese and European modernization. How do we get from ‘Crazy Rich Europeans’ to ‘Crazy Rich Asians’? Usually offered every year.

HIST 184b Swashbuckling Adventurers or Sea Bandits? The Chinese Pirate in Global Perspective
[ nw ss wi ]

Explores the commercial role, political economy, social structure, and national imaginations of the Chinese pirate situated in both world history and in comparison to "piracies" elsewhere. Usually offered every third year.

HIST 187a Frenemy States: Identity and Integration in East Asia
[ ss wi ]

Examines the emergence and development of distinct national identities in East Asia. We focus upon key transformative moments and events in the histories of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam from the dawn of time to the early twentieth century. Usually offered every third year.

HIST 187b Unequal Histories: Caste, Religion, and Dissent in India
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Examines the religious, political, and social dimensions of discrimination in India. In order to study caste, power, and representation, we will look at religious texts, historical debates, film, and literature from the Vedic Age to contemporary India. Usually offered every second year.

HIST/SOC 170b Gender and Sexuality in South Asia
[ djw nw ss ]

Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or permission of the instructor.

Explores historical and contemporary debates about gender and sexuality in South Asia; revisits concepts of "woman," "sex," "femininity," "home," "family," "community," "nation," "reform," "protection," and "civilization" across the colonial and postcolonial periods. Usually offered every second year.

HS 110a Labor, Work, and Inequality
[ ss ]

Examines what economic and social factors drive inequality in terms of conditions at work, from wages to discrimination to worker voice, and how these conditions are connected to business decisions, government policies, union and worker advocacy, and worker norms and beliefs. Usually offered every year.

HSSP 102a Introduction to Global Health
[ ss ]

A primer on major issues in health care in developing nations. Topics include the natural history of disease and levels of prevention; epidemiological transitions; health disparities; and determinants of health including culture, social context, and behavior. Also covers: infectious and chronic disease incidence and prevalence; the role of nutrition, education, reproductive trends, and poverty; demographic transition including aging and urbanization; the structure and financing of health systems; and the globalization of health. Usually offered every year.

HSSP 136a Comparative Public Health Systems in Latin America
[ djw ss ]

Offered through the Brandeis in Mérida: Public Health in the Yucatán Peninsula summer study abroad program.

Through this course, students gain an introductory knowledge on how public health is addressed in Latin America; the system organization and the main indicators used to produce public policies. What are the social and economic determinants of health in the region? What are the principal issues in the Latin American context? How do different systems across countries address them? The human rights approach in Latin America and North American approach to health challenges. Differences between Latin American and US systems. Social medicine and its contributions. Role of the State, private sector, NGOs and international organizations, and their interrelations. How features of Latin American systems can constitute an input to a global comprehension of public health. Usually offered every year.

HSSP 152b Introduction to Demography: Social Determinants of Health and Wellbeing
[ ss ]

Explores the social and health consequences of population dynamics within the U.S. and globally that affect wellbeing of families and nations including poverty and inequality, maternal and child health, aging, fertility and epidemiological transitions, workforce, immigration among other policy concerns. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 136b Contemporary Chinese Society and Culture
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Introduces students to contemporary Chinese society, with a focus on the rapid transformations that have taken place during the post-Mao era with a focus on family, gender, sexuality, migration, ethnicity, and family planning. Usually offered every third year.

IGS 140a Styles of Globalization
[ ss wi ]

Why do some countries benefit from globalization while others lag behind? How do different nations balance issues such as free trade, foreign investment, and workers' rights? This course considers the real-world choices behind success and failure in the global economy. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 36b Historical and Comparative Sociology
[ dl ss ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took SOC 136b in prior years.

Explores the relationship between sociology and history through examples of scholarship from both disciplines. Using historical studies, the course pays close attention to each author's research strategy. Examines basic research questions, theoretical underpinnings and assumptions, and uses of evidence. Usually offered every third year.

WGS 108a Ecofeminism and Climate Justice Activism
[ ss wi ]

From local activism to regional and national fights against militarization and deforestation to broader movement organizing, education, and international politics, this class aims to showcase how ecofeminists and ecowomanists nurture and grow resilience in times of multiple crises through employing “a radical political orientation grounded in solidarity, rather than sameness, as an organizing principle.” Usually offered every second year.

WGS 135b Postcolonial Feminisms
[ hum oc ]

Examines feminist theories, literature, and film from formerly colonized, Anglophone countries in South Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa. It takes the shared path of decolonization and postcoloniality to discuss the development of feminist discourse and the diverse trajectories of gendered lives. Usually offered every third year.

AAAS 120a African History in Real Time
[ djw nw oc ss ]

This information literacy-driven course equips students with the skills to place current events in Africa in their historical context. Collectively the class builds 5-6 distinct course modules which entail sourcing and evaluating current news stories from a range of media outlets, selecting those that merit in-depth historical analysis, and developing a syllabus for each one. Usually offered every second year.

AAAS 125b Caribbean Women and Globalization: Sexuality, Citizenship, Work
[ ss wi ]

Utilizing perspectives from sociology, anthropology, fiction, and music to examine the relationship between women's sexuality and conceptions of labor, citizenship, and sovereignty. The course considers these alongside conceptions of masculinity, contending feminisms, and the global perspective. Usually offered every second year.

AAAS 127a African Refugees
[ djw ss ]

An in-depth study of African refugees in dynamic contexts, and their centrality to the understanding and analysis of key issues in the politics, history, and international relations of African States. Usually offered every year.

AAAS 128b Contemporary Africa
[ djw oc ss ]

A broad synopsis of the dynamic character of contemporary Africa and key current issues dominating the continent. Designed for students from all disciplines, the course will emphasize the utilization of critical thinking skills to consider the place and future of Africa in today's highly globalized world. Usually offered every second year.

AAAS 134b Novel and Film of the African Diaspora
[ djw hum nw ]

Writers and filmmakers, who are usually examined separately under national or regional canonical categories such as "(North) American," "Latin American," "African," "British," or "Caribbean," are brought together here to examine transnational identities and investments in "authentic," "African," or "black" identities. Usually offered every third year.

AMST 136a Planet Hollywood: American Cinema in Global Perspective
[ hum ss ]

Examines the global reach of Hollywood cinema as an art, business, and purveyor of American values, tracking how Hollywood has absorbed foreign influences and how other nations have adapted and resisted the Hollywood juggernaut. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 26a Communication and Media
[ dl ss ]

A wide-ranging exploration of the human communicative capacity, starting with verbal and visual communicative modalities and culminating in the study of communication through mass and social media. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 80a Anthropology of Religion
[ nw ss ]

Introduces the anthropological study of religious experience and practices across diverse contexts. Studies rituals, from initiation to conversion to pilgrimage, and examines the relationship between religion, society, and politics in a variety of societies. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 130b Visuality and Culture
[ dl ss ]

Introduces students to the study of visual, aural, and artistic media through an ethnographic lens. Course combines written and creative assignments to understand how culture shapes how we make meaning out of images and develop media literacy. Topics include ethnographic/documentary film, advertising, popular culture, viral videos and special effects, photography, art worlds, and the technological development of scientific images. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 140a Human Rights in Global Perspective
[ djw ss wi ]

Explores a range of debates about human rights as a concept as well as the practice of human rights work. The human rights movement seeks the recognition of universal norms that transcend political and cultural difference while anthropology seeks to explore and analyze the great diversity of human life. To what extent can these two goals--advocating for universal norms and respecting cultural difference--be reconciled? The course examines cases from various parts of the world concerning: indigenous peoples, environment, health, gender, genocide/violence/nation-states and globalization. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 144a The Anthropology of Gender
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Anthropology majors have priority for enrollment.

Explores gender, sexuality, and cultural systems from a comparative perspective. Topics may include rituals of masculinity and femininity, the vexing question of the universality of women's subordination, culturally-specific classifications of sexual orientation and gender identity, transnational feminisms, sex work, migrant labor, reproductive rights, and much more. Usually offered every year.

ANTH 150a Environmental Justice in Global Perspective
[ djw ss ]

Explores anthropological and humanistic approaches to understanding human-environment interactions, the global climate crisis, and environmental justice and climate justice movements highlighting how ecological crises have disproportionately impacted the poor, women and children, and Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. Key themes include: cultural understandings of “nature” and the “environment;” the cultural politics of race, indigeneity, and nature; militarism, empire, and the environment; feminist, queer and decolonial ecologies; Asian American and Pacific Islander environmental justice movements; and perspectives on the global climate crisis and the Anthropocene from the Global South. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 153a Writing Systems and Scribal Traditions
[ nw ss ]

Explores the ways in which writing has been conceptualized in social anthropology, linguistics and archaeology. A comparative study of various forms of visual communication, both non-glottic and glottic systems, is undertaken to better understand the nature of pristine and contemporary phonetic scripts around the world and to consider alternative models to explain their origin, prestige, and obsolescence. The course pays particular attention to the social functions of early writing systems, the linkage of literacy and political power, and the production of historical memory. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 178b Culture, Gender and Power in East Asia
[ nw ss wi ]

Examines the role of culture in changing gender power relations in East Asia by exploring how the historical legacy of Confucianism in the region influences the impact of changes such as the constitutional proclamation of gender equality and rapid industrialization. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 184b Art in the Ancient World
[ djw nw ss ]

A cross-cultural and diachronic exploration of art, focusing on the communicative aspects of visual aesthetics. The survey takes a broad view of how human societies deploy images and objects to foster identities, lure into consumption, generate political propaganda, engage in ritual, render sacred propositions tangible, and chart the character of the cosmos. Usually offered every second year.

CHIN 136b Chinese Modernism in International Context
[ hum nw ]

Taught in English.

Examines the origins, recurrences, and metamorphosis of modernistic styles and movements in twentieth-century Chinese literature, film, fine art, and intellectual discourses. Usually offered every second year.

ENG 32a 21st-Century Global Fiction: A Basic Course
[ djw hum nw oc ]

Offers an introduction to 21st-century global fiction in English. What is fiction and how does it illuminate contemporary issues such as migration, terrorism, and climate change? Authors include Zadie Smith, Amitav Ghosh, Chimamanda Adichie, Mohsin Hamid, J.M. Coetzee and others. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 52a Refugee Stories, Refugee Lives
[ deis-us djw dl hum nw oc ]

Yields 6 credits.

Examines the functions of storytelling in the refugee crisis. Its main objective is to further students' understanding of the political dimensions of storytelling. The course explores how reworking of reality enable people to question State and social structures. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 62b Contemporary African Literature, Global Perspectives
[ djw dl hum nw oc ]

What is "African" in African literature when the majority of writers are somehow removed from the African societies they portray? How do expatriate writers represent African subjectivities and cultures at the intersection of Diaspora and globalization? Who reads the works produced by these writers? Usually offered every third year.

ENG 66b Contemporary Global Dystopias
[ djw hum wi ]

Explores the sources, moods, and effects of dystopian fiction from around the world. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 111b Postcolonial Theory
[ djw hum wi ]

Introduces students to key concepts in postcolonial theory. Traces the consequences of European colonialism for politics, culture and literature around the world, situates these within ongoing contemporary debates, and considers the usefulness of postcolonial theory for understanding the world today. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 127b Migrating Bodies, Migrating Texts
[ djw hum nw ]

Beginning with the region's representation as a tabula rasa, examines the textual and visual constructions of the Caribbean as colony, homeland, backyard, paradise, and Babylon, and how the region's migrations have prompted ideas about evolution, hedonism, imperialism, nationalism, and diaspora. Usually offered every second year.

ENG 137b Women and War
[ djw dl hum nw ]

Examines how African women writers and filmmakers use testimony to bear witness to mass violence. How do these writers resist political and sociocultural silencing systems that reduce traumatic experience to silence, denial, and terror? Usually offered every third year.

ENG 152a Indian Love Stories
[ djw dl hum nw ]

Introduces students to writings on love, desire and sexuality from ancient India to the present. Topics include ancient eroticism, love in Urdu poetry, Gandhi's sexual asceticism, colonial regulation of sexuality, Bollywood, queer fiction and more. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 170a Nigerian Movies in the World
[ hum nw ]

Introduces students to Nigeria's film industry, one of the world's largest. It focuses on both the form and the content of Nollywood films. Examines how Nollywood films project local, national, and regional issues onto global screens. Usually offered every third year.

ENG/WLIT 140b Children's Literature and Constructions of Childhood
[ hum ]

Explores whether children's literature has sought to civilize or to subvert, to moralize or to enchant, forming a bedrock for adult sensibility. Childhood reading reflects the unresolved complexity of the experience of childhood itself as well as larger cultural shifts around the globe in values and beliefs. Usually offered every third year.

ENVS 131b The Political Economy of Global Climate Governance
[ djw ss ]

Introduction to the  political economy of climate governance and its social justice implications, especially the perspectives and proposals from the global South (Latin America, Africa, and South Asia). This course will map, compare, and systematize different proposals based on the green economy to public ownership and control over common goods proposals like just transition and buen vivir. Students are encouraged to discuss and apply concepts to their own creative proposals for social interventions, developing their practice and skills for climate activism, engagement, and leadership. Usually offered every year.

FA 165a Contemporary Art
[ ca ]

After theories of power and representation and art movements of pop, minimalism, and conceptual art were established by the 1970s, artists began to create what we see in galleries today. This course addresses art at the turn of the millennium with attention to intersections of art and identity, politics, economy, and history. Usually offered every third year.

FA 166b Representing Globalism
[ ca djw nw ]

For several decades, artists have been investigating the character and consequences of life under global capitalism. Through examination of writings by artists, theorists, and historians in the context of art since the turn of the millennium, this course seeks to uncover stories of the global present and possible futures. Usually offered every third year.

FA 192a Studies in Modern and Contemporary Art
[ ca oc ]

Topics may vary from year to year; the course may be repeated for credit.

Usually offered every third year.

FREN 110a Cultural Representations
[ fl hum oc ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

A foundation course in French and Francophone culture, analyzing texts and other cultural phenomena such as film, painting, music, and politics. Usually offered every year.

FREN 111a The Republic
[ fl hum oc ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

The "Republic" analyzes how the republican ideal of the citizen devoid of religious, ethnic, or gender identity has fared in different Francophone political milieux. Course involves understanding how political institutions such as constitutions, parliaments, and court systems interact with reality of modern societies in which religious, ethnic, and gender identities play important roles. Usually offered every year.

FREN 125b Mediterranean Crossings
[ fl hum ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Navigating French and Francophone literature and film, we will explore the Mediterranean as a transnational space of multiple circulations, migrations, and cultural crossings in works by Lebanese, Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian, Greek, Romanian, and French writers and filmmakers. Usually offered every third year.

FREN 139a Bad Girls and Boys: Du mauvais genre
[ fl hum ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Through a selection of literary texts, articles, images and films, students will explore how works from the Middle Ages to present day depict male and female figures in the French and Francophone world who have failed to conform to expectations of their gender. Usually offered every second year.

FREN 161a The Enigma of Being Oneself: From Du Bellay to Laferrière
[ djw fl hum wi ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Explores the relationship of identity formation and modern individualism in texts by writers working in France, Francophone Africa and Canada. Authors range from modern and contemporary writers Sarah Kofman, Dany Laferrière, Achille Mbembe, Alain Mabanckou, and Edouard Glissant to early-modern writers like Joachim Du Bellay and Michel de Montaigne. Usually offered every year.

HISP 192b Latin American Global Film
[ djw hum nw oc ]

May be taught in English or Spanish.

We will study the dynamic between local and global imagination and forces in the production, circulation, and reception of films from and/or about "Latin America." Local productions, traditional topics and genres are now refashioned for international audiences. Some film directors and actors have gained mainstream global visibility; U.S.-based ‘platforms’ finance local productions for international markets. How are all these new and old images and narratives mobilized? What are all these forces and projections doing? Analysis of visual representation and film techniques will be combined with an attention to socio-cultural backgrounds. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 52b Europe in the Modern World
[ oc ss ]

Explores European history from the Enlightenment to the present emphasizing how developments in Europe have shaped and been shaped by broader global contexts. Topics include: revolution, industrialization, political and social reforms, nationalism, imperialism, legacies of global wars, totalitarianism, and decolonization. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 56b Rethinking World History (to 1960)
[ djw nw ss ]

An introductory survey of world history, from the dawn of "civilization" to c.1960. Topics include the establishment and rivalry of political communities, the development of material life, and the historical formation of cultural identities. Usually offered every year.

HIST 71a Latin American and Caribbean History I: Colonialism, Slavery, Freedom
[ djw hum nw ss ]

Studies colonialism in Latin America and Caribbean, focusing on coerced labor and struggles for freedom as defining features of the period: conquest; Indigenous, African, and Asian labor; colonial institutions and economics; Independence and revolutionary movements. Usually offered every year.

HIST 71b Latin American and Caribbean History II: Modernity, Medicine, Sexuality
[ djw hum nw ss ]

Studies the idea of "modernity" in Latin America and Caribbean, centered on roles of health and human reproduction in definitions of the "modern" citizen: post-slavery labor, race and national identity; modern politics and economics; transnational relations. Usually offered every year.

HIST 80b East Asia in the Modern World
[ hum nw ss ]

Surveys East Asian history from the 1600 to the present. Compares Chinese, Korean, and Japanese encounters with forces of industrial capitalism, including colonialism, urbanization, and globalization, resulting in East Asia's distinctive cultural and social modernity. Usually offered every year.

HIST 109b A Global History of Sport: Politics, Economy, Race and Culture
[ deis-us djw nw oc ss ]

Examines soccer, boxing, baseball, cricket and other sports to reflect on culture, politics, race, and globalization. With a focus on empire, gender, ethnicity, this course considers sport as the battleground for ideological and group contests. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 111b The Iranian Revolution in Global Context
[ djw dl nw ss ]

The 1979 revolution in Iran was the last great revolution of the 20th century that reverberates until today. We examine the roots of that revolution, and the nature of the state and society that resulted from it within a broader global context. The first two units focus on pre-revolutionary and revolutionary Iran, particularly the 1960s and 1970s, examining national and global forces that laid the groundwork for the 1979 revolution.  We also analyze the multiple narratives of the revolution itself—as an Islamic movement, an anti-monarchical movement, and an anti-imperialist movement. In the final unit, we look at some of the characteristics of the Islamic Republic and the global tensions that have resulted from its specific historical development. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 125b Europe in the Global Cold War
[ deis-us ss ]

Offers a thematic overview of the history of the post-1945 period in Europe’s East and West, and situates these histories in their global contexts, such as decolonization, environmental change (Chornobyl catastrophe) the struggle of the USSR and the US, the Vietnam War, and debates on the “end of history” around 1989. We will study how events that started in Eastern and East-Central Europe, such as the Russian Revolution, World War II, as well as the collapse of the Soviet Union triggered political and social changes in China, Southeast Asia, and other parts of the world. Through reading diplomatic correspondence, pamphlets, memoirs and literature written by dissidents, party members, and politicians, as well as by watching and reflecting on media footage, we will examine how the Cold War and 1989 ushered in a new world order that is here with us up to the present. The course also focuses on how European states East and West rebuilt ties with the “Global South” through socialist solidarity, development aid and investments, and how the Cold War shapes the institutions and politics of the European Union up to the present. Usually offered every year.

HIST 134b The Ottoman Empire: From Principality to Republic by way of Empire
[ ss ]

Starting around the year 1300, the Ottomans grew from a tiny principality into a global Islamic empire by 1550, and in 1923 transformed into the modern Republic of Turkey. Ottoman history is the history of southeastern Europe, Anatolia, the Middle East, and most of North Africa. This course explores the arc of this 600-year history as it considers what enabled the Ottomans to emerge and flourish, as well as the processes that eventually tore the empire apart. By the end of the course, students will appreciate Ottoman legacies to politics, economics, culture, art, language, and food that are local, regional and global, with a direct influence on over two dozen modern nations. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 135b Get Up, Stand Up: A Century of Revolutions in the Middle East
[ djw nw oc ss ]

An examination of the various revolutions that have shaped the modern Middle East since the late 19th century. The course focuses on four different revolutionary moments: The constitutional revolutions of the turn of the century, the anti-colonial revolutions of mid-century, the radical revolutions of the 1970's, and most recently, the Arab Spring revolutions that have affected the region since 2011. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 136b Global War and Revolutions in the Eighteenth Century
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Surveys global conflicts and revolutions and examines exchanges of idea, peoples, and goods in the eighteenth-century Atlantic World. Explores the legacies of inter-imperial rivalry and the intellectual borrowings and innovations of the American, French, and Haitian revolutions in comparative perspective. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 147a Russian Empire: Gender, Minorities, and Globalization
[ djw dl oc ss ]

Examines the processes and problems of modernization--state development, economic growth, social change, cultural achievements, and emergence of revolutionary and terrorist movements. Usually offered every year.

HIST 147b Twentieth-Century Russia: Revolution, Nationality, Global Power
[ dl oc ss ]

Russian history from the 1905 revolution to the present day, with particular emphasis on the Revolution of 1917, Stalinism, culture, and the decline and fall of the USSR. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 166a History of Crises: Europe's Twentieth Century
[ djw nw ss ]

Systematically tackles the main turning points of Western and Eastern Europe’s modern history and their global impact. The focus is on the first half of the twentieth century, and the histories of the First and Second World Wars that still shape contemporary world politics today. We will also touch on the histories of colonialism, totalitarianism, the Ukrainian famine under Stalin, the Holocaust, and "moral panics" around changing gender roles. Analyzes both primary sources and the most recent scholarly debates. Requirements include a book review and a short research paper. Usually offered every year.

HIST 178b Britain and India: Connected Histories
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Surveys the history of Britain and India from the rise of the East India Company to the present. Explores cultural and economic exchanges; shifts in power and phases of imperial rule; resistance and collaboration; nationalism; decolonization and partition; and postcolonial legacies. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 179b India and the Superpowers (USA, USSR, and China): 1947 and Beyond
[ nw ss ]

Examines the history of modern India through its relationships with the "superpowers," USA, USSR, and China. Covering the period between 1947-2018, the course analyses ideological, economic, foreign policy shifts and subcontinental conflict in a constantly changing geo-political scene. Usually offered every second year.

Avinash Singh

HIST 182b Modern China
[ djw nw ss ]

Surveys Chinese history from the Ming to Mao, with an emphasis on political, social, cultural, and literary trends; and attention toward ethnic minorities and overseas communities and diaspora. Usually offered every year.

HIST 185b Turkey: From Ataturk to Erdogan
[ djw ss ]

Examines the history of the Turkish Republic, from its founding in the wake of World War I until the beginning of the 21st century. Through discussions of politics, economics, society and culture, the course studies the forces that shaped and reshaped Turkey. Like the Ottoman Empire from which it emerged, Turkey has attracted the attention of admirers and detractors alike. Meanwhile, it has played key roles and continues to be an important economic, political and cultural hub in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and the world. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 186a Europe in World War II
[ dl ss wi ]

Examines the military and diplomatic, social and economic history of the war. Topics include war origins; allied diplomacy; the neutrals; war propaganda; occupation, resistance, and collaboration; the mass murder of the Jews; "peace feelers"; the war economies; scientific warfare and the development of nuclear weapons; and the origins of the Cold War. Usually offered every third year.

HIST 187b Unequal Histories: Caste, Religion, and Dissent in India
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Examines the religious, political, and social dimensions of discrimination in India. In order to study caste, power, and representation, we will look at religious texts, historical debates, film, and literature from the Vedic Age to contemporary India. Usually offered every second year.

HIST/IGS 180b Modern India: From Partition to the Present
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Examines the history, culture, and economy of modern India (1947-2019) with a focus on key concerns, such as the environment, urbanization, gender/sexual relations, and the transformations of democratic politics. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 104a Seminar in International Order
[ oc ss wi ]

Prerequisites: IGS 8a and IGS 10A recommended.

Critically appraises the institutions known as the “international order.” We examine threats to this order and consider how it may evolve or erode with the renewed influence of rising powers and perturbations to the balance of power. Our interaction with the scholarly debate is interspersed with sessions on research methods to enable students to conduct research on related topics. Usually offered every year.

IGS 108a Seminar in Law, Justice, and Human Rights
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Explores international justice and human rights regimes along with concepts and prominent theories that inform the field. We examine specific cases carried out in different national settings and critique the utility and efficacy of international human rights institutions. Usually offered every year.

IGS 110a Religion and Secularism in French & Francophone Culture
[ hum ss ]

Tackles the persistent power of religion in France and its former colonies despite common ideals of secular nationalism. Through literature and film we will study the historical and contemporary cultural wars waged around the French notion of 'laïcité' -- its confrontation with Islam, but also the experiences of Jews, Catholics, and Protestants.

IGS 130a Crossing Borders: Mobility and Displacement in a Global Age
[ ss ]

Introduces students to the social, cultural, religious, political, and economic forces that shape global migration today. We follow migration flows across borders and assess their implications for the migrant, the state, and the global economy. Case studies include refugees and asylees whose rights are protected by international law. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 138a China in the World
[ djw ss wi ]

This course examines China's role on the world stage. Looking at the history of China's interaction with the world, both at home and abroad, we will examine how China has affected, and been affected by, other societies and cultures. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 165a Revolution, Religion, and Terror: Postcolonial Histories
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Examines religious conflict, revolutionary violence, and civil war in modern South Asia. It looks at Jihad, Maoist militancy, rising fundamentalism, and political violence. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 171a The Asian Wave: Global Pop Culture and its Histories
[ djw ss ]

Asia is not only remaking itself but also exporting images and ideas across the world. This course explores how Asian pop culture shapes global modernity, as countries project their values and aspirations to a global audience through increasing connectivity. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 173a Asian Gangsters: Contemporary Crime Cinema
[ djw dl ss ]

Studies contemporary crime films to examine modern Asian society and politics. Drawing upon film theory, cultural studies, historical and sociological research, this class considers the world's largest media market to understand the continent's rapidly changing socio-political milieu. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 175a Digital Asia: Democracy in the Internet Age
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Analyzes the transformative potential of the internet as an agent of development and as a mechanism for disrupting social and political orders in Asia, home to the world's largest democracy and also the world's largest authoritarian regime. Usually offered every second year.

IGS/LGLS 128b Networks of Global Justice
[ ss ]

Examines how global justice is actively shaped by dynamic institutions, contested ideas, and evolving cultures. Using liberal arts methods, the course explores prospects for advancing peace and justice in a complex world. It is organized around case studies of humanitarian crises, involving health, poverty, migration, and peace-building across nations. Usually offered every third year.

JOUR 132b Covering the World: International Reporting and Global Affairs
[ ss ]

Explores the evolution of reporting on international affairs and other cultures for an American audience, and how the work of overseas correspondents shapes foreign policy and public opinion. It will examine the challenges facing journalists working in foreign countries and the ethical, cultural, technological, and political factors that influence the U.S. media's coverage of global affairs. Usually offered every second year.

LGLS 123b Immigration and Human Rights
[ deis-us ss ]

Examines U.S. immigration practices policy in the context of international human rights treaties, social movements, historical dynamics, political struggles, and global practices, with some attention to other states' immigration policies. This course focuses on the how the daily interactions of societal institutions and roles is continuously constructing immigration and human rights systems and ideas. As such, much of the class work in this course involves practical exercises in which students experience the decision making and roles of human rights lawyers, organizers and policy leaders in the context of current social and cultural controversies, ideologies, and events. So, students will be introduced to the generally applicable skills, concepts, values, and attitudes involved in human rights litigation, movement organizing, and policy making. This course explores tensions between social movements, domestic politics, and international law in guiding immigration reform, and challenges students to assess the sources of rights and the winners and losers (in terms of efficacy and accountability) of rights talk. Usually offered every spring.

LGLS 124b Comparative Law and Development
[ djw nw ss ]

Surveys legal systems across the world with special application to countries in the process of political, social, or economic transition. Examines constitutional and rule-of-law principles in the context of developing global networks. Usually offered every second year.

LGLS 125b International Law and Organizations
[ ss ]

Introduction to international law, its nature, sources, and application, for example, its role in the management of international conflicts. Topics may include international agreements, international organizations including the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, states and recognition, nationality and alien rights, territorial and maritime jurisdiction, international claims, and the laws of war and human rights. Usually offered every third year.

LGLS 129a Transitional Justice: Global Justice and Societies in Transition
[ djw ss ]

Introduces transitional justice, a set of practices that arise following a period of conflict that aim directly at confronting past violations of human rights. This course will focus on criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations, memorials, and the contributions of art and culture. Usually offered every year.

LGLS 130a Resolving Conflicts: Introduction to ADR and Mediation
[ oc ss ]

Designed for students interested in learning to constructively deal with conflict, this course examines the spectrum of ADR with a particular focus on mediation. Students will learn to become effective mediators and skilled facilitators of the mediation process. This course meets the requirements outlined in the Massachusetts Confidentiality Statute (MGL ch233 sec 23C) and Rule 8(c)(i) of the MA Supreme Judicial Court’s Uniform Rules on Dispute Resolution, the standard for mediating in the District Court and beyond in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Usually offered every second year.

NEJS 104b Islam: Civilization and Institutions
[ hum nw ]

Provides a disciplined study of Islamic civilization from its origins to the modern period. Approaches the study from a humanities perspective. Topics covered will include the Qur'an, tradition, law, theology, politics, Islam and other religions, modern developments, and women in Islam. Usually offered every year.

NEJS 138a Genocide and Mass Killing in the Twentieth Century
[ hum ]

An interdisciplinary seminar examining history and sociology of the internationally punishable crime of genocide, with the focus on theory, prevention, and punishment of genocide. Case studies include Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, Stalin's Russia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda. Usually offered every second year.

NEJS 189a The Arab-Israeli Conflict
[ hum ss ]

Consideration of Arab-Jewish relations, attitudes, and interactions from 1880 to the present. Emphasis on social factors and intellectual currents and their impact on politics. Examines the conflict within its international setting. Usually offered every third year.

NEJS 189b Formative Moments in the Disputed Land of Israel-Palestine
[ djw hum ]

Examines the history of Israel/Palestine during the 20th century by focusing on several formative moments that took place pre and post 1948. It reexamines key issues that emerged around each of those events and explores the implications they had on the formation of Israeli and Palestinian societies. Usually offered every second year.

POL 119a Seminar: Red States, Blue States: Understanding Contemporary American Voters and Parties
[ dl ss ]

What are the root causes of contemporary partisan polarization and how do we explain the observed differentiation in partisan leanings across red and blue states?  In this seminar, students will pursue guided, independent research on voter and party behavior. Because of the focus on primary research, students are encouraged, although not required, to have taken POL 52A (or an equivalent) prior to enrolling in POL 119. Usually offered every year.

POL 128a The Politics of Revolution: State Violence and Popular Insurgency in the Third World
[ nw ss ]

Introduction to twentieth-century revolutionary movements in the Third World, focusing on the emergence of peasant-based resistance and revolution in the world beyond the West, and on the role of state violence in provoking popular involvement in protest, rebellion, and insurgency. Usually offered every year.

POL 129b Internet and Politics
[ dl ss ]

Prerequisite: POL 10a, POL 11b, POL 14b, or POL 15a.

Explores the effects of the Internet on politics and society. Covers issues of Internet governance and institutions, the rise of the global network economy, and the effects of the Internet on social identity. Contemporaneous events and issues such as the digital revolutions, the digital divide, fake news, and coordinated disinformation campaigns are also covered in detail. Usually offered every year.

POL 133b Politics of Russia and the Post Communist World
[ ss wi ]

Overview of the politics of Russia and the former Soviet world. Topics include the fall and legacy of communism, trends of democracy and dictatorship, European integration, resurgent nationalism, social and economic patterns throughout the former Soviet Bloc, and Putin's rise and influence both within Russia and abroad. Usually offered every year.

POL 134b Seminar: The Global Migration Crisis
[ djw ss wi ]

Looks at immigration from the perspectives of policy-makers, migrants, and the groups affected by immigration in sender nations as well as destination countries. Introduces students to the history of migration policy, core concepts and facts about migration in the West, and to the theories and disagreements among immigrant scholars. Usually offered every second year.

POL 137b Seminar: Psychology of Political Violence
[ dl ss ]

Why do people become terrorists? Social scientists argue that organizations use terrorism because it is a rational means for obtaining their objectives. But why do individuals sacrifice themselves for a cause? Drawing on behavioral economics and criminal psychology in addition to political sociology, the course will review new approaches to the study of extreme political violence. Usually offered every year.

POL 139a Seminar: The Radical Right: From Ballots to Bullets
[ deis-us oc ss wi ]

Radical right and far-right are umbrella terms used to refer to political parties and militant subcultures that differentiate themselves from mainstream conservatism. Students will be introduced to case studies of far-right groups and parties in Western Europe and the United States. We will discuss their ideologies and tactics, the different subcultures and the legal restraints that countries have used to control extremist groups linked to violence. Students will also learn about political science theories about the causes of far-right extremism. Usually offered every second year.

POL 144a Latin American Politics
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Examines the development and deepening of democracy in Latin America, focusing on the role of political institutions, economic development, the military, and U.S.-Latin American relations. Usually offered every year.

POL 160a The War on Global Terrorism
[ dl ss ]

Intended for juniors and seniors, but open to all students.

Explores how 9/11 changed our lives. The course surveys the build-up of Al Queda leading up to the 9/11 attacks and ten years of counter terrorism. Students are given an introduction to Jihadist doctrines and Al Queda's structure, as well as theories about the cause of terrorism. Usually offered every year.

POL 161b Good Neighbor or Imperial Power: The Contested Evolution of US-Latin American Relations
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Studies the ambivalent and complex relationship between the U.S. and Latin America, focusing on how the exploitative dimension of this relationship has shaped societies across the region, and on how Latin American development can be beneficial for the U.S. Usually offered every year.

POL 163a Seminar: The United Nations and the United States
[ djw dl ss wi ]

Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

Investigates the United Nations organization and charter, with an emphasis on the integral role of the United States in its founding and operation. Using archival documents and other materials, explores topics such as UN enforcement actions, the Security Council veto, human rights, and the domestic politics of US commitments to the UN. Usually offered every year.

POL 164a Seminar: Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and Peacemaking
[ ss ]

Spans the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, from the origins of Zionism and Palestinian nationalism in the late 19th century to the Hamas-Israel war that began on October 7, 2023. Uniquely co-taught by two scholars, one Palestinian and one Israeli, the class exposes students to competing perspectives about the conflict and provides a toolbox for explaining its causes and consequences. As the class is conducted seminar-style, student participation is expected and encouraged. Usually offered every year.

POL 165a Seminar: Dilemmas of Security Cooperation
[ dl ss wi ]

States regularly cooperate in the security domain. They can choose to band together in alliances, rely on stronger states for defense, or improve weaker actors' capacity to fight or defend themselves by providing arms and training. Security cooperation is a major feature of international relations, with powerful actors like the United States spending billions each year on efforts to arm, equip, and train partner militaries around the world. But security cooperation contains many dilemmas where states face difficult choices between alternatives without clear answers. Efforts to increase security can lead to unintended consequences, both for states and for the people who live in them. This course explores different dilemmas across a range of topics, considering both the causes and consequences of security cooperation. Topics include alliances, proxy warfare, arms transfers and military aid, peacekeeping, and security outcomes ranging from combat effectiveness to political violence and human rights. Usually offered every third year.

POL 167b Russian Foreign Policy
[ oc ss wi ]

Surveys Russian foreign policy in the contemporary world, with particular attention paid to the deep historical context for its attitudes and goals in international relations. Topics include relations with the larger post-communist region, the Muslim world, its ongoing antagonistic relations with America and the West, the rise of disinformation warfare on the internet, in addition to the distinct Russian perspective on geopolitics. Usually offered every year.

POL 170a Seminar: Nuclear Weapons and International Security
[ ss ]

Examines the role of nuclear weapons in international relations from World War II to the present.   We will cover the technology of nuclear weapons, the development of nuclear strategy and doctrine, arms control and nonproliferation efforts, and the spread of nuclear weapons beyond the Western powers (the U.S., Russia, United Kingdom and France) to the Middle East and Asia, including China, India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea.  Usually offered every year. 

POL 184a Seminar: Global Justice
[ djw ss wi ]

Prerequisites: One course in Political Theory or Moral, Social and Political Philosophy.

Explores the development of the topic of global justice and its contents. Issues to be covered include international distributive justice, duties owed to the global poor, humanitarian intervention, the ethics of climate change, and immigration. Usually offered every second year.

RECS/WLIT 136a All in the Family: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and the English Novel
[ hum ]

Selected novels and writings of Austen, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Woolf will be read to trace both the evolution of the novel and the meanings, contexts and depictions of the family. The family novel encompasses such larger questions as how we regard the pain of others and how we define community. Usually offered every second year.

REL/SAS 152a Introduction to Hinduism, Yoga, and the Divine in South Asia
[ hum nw ]

Introduces Hindu practice and thought. Explores broadly the variety of forms, practices, and philosophies that have been developing from the time of the Vedas (ca. 1500 BCE) up to present day popular Hinduism practiced in both urban and rural India. Examines the relations between Hindu religion and its wider cultural, social, and political contexts, relations between the Hindu majority of India and minority traditions, and questions of Hindu identity both in India and abroad. Usually offered every second year.

SAS 100a India and Pakistan: Understanding South Asia
[ djw hum nw ss ]

Examines the making and unmaking of modern South Asia as a region, with particular focus on India and Pakistan as well as their connections to Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Using perspectives from history, politics, anthropology, literature, and film, the course introduces students to key themes in the study of South Asia, such as colonialism and anti-colonial struggles, legacies of empire, caste critique and Dalit thought, gender and sexuality, religion, and popular culture. Usually offered every year. Usually offered every year.

SAS 150b Love, Sex, and Country: Films from India
[ djw hum nw ]

A study of Hindi films made in India since 1947 with a few notable exceptions from regional film, as well as some recent films made in English. Students will read Hindi films as texts/narratives of the nation to probe the occurrence of cultural, religious, historical, political, and social themes. Usually offered every third year.

SOC 127a Religion, Ethnicity, and Nationalism
[ nw oc ss ]

Examines three sources of identity that are influential in global affairs: religion, ethnicity and nationalism. Considers theories of the relationship among these identities, especially "secularization theory," then reviews historical examples such as Poland, Iran, India, and Pakistan. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 146a Mass Communication Theory
[ ss ]

An examination of key theories in mass communication, including mass culture, hegemony, the production of culture, and public sphere. Themes discussed include the nature of media effects, the role of the audience, and the extent of diversity in the mass media. Usually offered every year.

SOC 146b Nationalism and Globalization
[ ss wi ]

In an age of globalization, why does nationalism thrive? Are globalization and nationalism rivals, strangers or possibly partners? Students will trace the emergence of nationalism while also examining globalization's impact on societies such as the United States, Russia, China, and India. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 162a Intellectuals and Revolutionary Politics
[ ss ]

Can you change a society by changing its culture? How do writers, painters, and bloggers give their countries new visions of justice -- or even revenge? This class studies the ideas behind revolutions, who creates them, and why. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 168a Democracy and Inequality in Global Perspective
[ ss ]

Can democracy survive great inequalities of wealth and status? In authoritarian countries, does inequality inspire revolution or obedience? What role does culture play in determining which inequalities are tolerable and which are not? Cases usually include the United States, India, and China. Usually offered every second year.

WGS 5a Women, Genders, and Sexualities
[ deis-us dl oc ss ]

This interdisciplinary course introduces central concepts and topics in the field of women's, gender, and sexuality studies. Explores the position of women and other genders in diverse settings and the impact of gender as a social, cultural, and intellectual category in the United States and around the globe. Asks how gendered institutions, behaviors, and representations have been configured in the past and function in the present, and also examines the ways in which gender and sexuality intersect with many other vectors of identity and circumstance in forming human affairs. Usually offered every fall.

WGS 105b Feminisms: History, Theory, and Practice
[ deis-us oc ss ]

Prerequisite: Students are encouraged, though not required, to take WGS 5a prior to enrolling in this course.

Examines diverse theories of sex and gender within a multicultural framework, considering historical changes in feminist thought, the theoretical underpinnings of various feminist practices, and the implications of diverse and often conflicting theories for both academic inquiry and social change. Usually offered every year.

WGS 108a Ecofeminism and Climate Justice Activism
[ ss wi ]

From local activism to regional and national fights against militarization and deforestation to broader movement organizing, education, and international politics, this class aims to showcase how ecofeminists and ecowomanists nurture and grow resilience in times of multiple crises through employing “a radical political orientation grounded in solidarity, rather than sameness, as an organizing principle.” Usually offered every second year.

WLIT 100a Introduction to Global Literature
[ dl hum oc ]

Core course for COML major and minor.

What is common and what is different in literatures of different cultures and times? How do literary ideas move from one culture to another? In this course students read theoretical texts, as well as literary works from around the world. Usually offered every year.

AAAS 131b African Women's and Gender Studies
[ djw ss wi ]

Introduction to the genealogy, epistemology, and pedagogy of African Women's and Gender Studies. Students examine a range of gendered experiences in Africa by applying interdisciplinary frames from feminist theory, history, queer studies, development studies, political science, economics, peace studies, literary, art and performance studies, and so on. Students critically evaluate scholarship that deconstructs static notions about women and gender in Africa by centering decolonial perspectives on the topics covered. Usually offered every second year.

AAAS 134b Novel and Film of the African Diaspora
[ djw hum nw ]

Writers and filmmakers, who are usually examined separately under national or regional canonical categories such as "(North) American," "Latin American," "African," "British," or "Caribbean," are brought together here to examine transnational identities and investments in "authentic," "African," or "black" identities. Usually offered every third year.

AMST 136a Planet Hollywood: American Cinema in Global Perspective
[ hum ss ]

Examines the global reach of Hollywood cinema as an art, business, and purveyor of American values, tracking how Hollywood has absorbed foreign influences and how other nations have adapted and resisted the Hollywood juggernaut. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 26a Communication and Media
[ dl ss ]

A wide-ranging exploration of the human communicative capacity, starting with verbal and visual communicative modalities and culminating in the study of communication through mass and social media. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 80a Anthropology of Religion
[ nw ss ]

Introduces the anthropological study of religious experience and practices across diverse contexts. Studies rituals, from initiation to conversion to pilgrimage, and examines the relationship between religion, society, and politics in a variety of societies. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 130b Visuality and Culture
[ dl ss ]

Introduces students to the study of visual, aural, and artistic media through an ethnographic lens. Course combines written and creative assignments to understand how culture shapes how we make meaning out of images and develop media literacy. Topics include ethnographic/documentary film, advertising, popular culture, viral videos and special effects, photography, art worlds, and the technological development of scientific images. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 134a Contemporary South Asia
[ djw ss ]

Explores contemporary life in a region called South Asia (including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal) through divergent histories, cultures, and concepts. Explores not just the region’s histories and cultures, but also a string of concepts and debates that simultaneously make and unmake the region as both a stable object of study as well as place on a map—including caste, Partition, ethnic conflict, religion, nationalism, gender, kinship, liberalization, postcoloniality, development, diaspora, and queerness. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 139b Language, Ethnicity, and Nationalism
[ ss ]

Explores the relationships between communication and community, and the ways language helps to shape social categories such as ethnic group, tribe, race, and nation. What role does language play in producing experiences of belonging and difference? A key component of this course will be exploring the relationship between language and culture. This course will consider a range of global cases, from large-scale projects like language standardization to smaller-scale community practices like code-switching, inflection, and slang to investigate the relationship between how we speak, who we are, and where we feel we belong. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 144a The Anthropology of Gender
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Anthropology majors have priority for enrollment.

Explores gender, sexuality, and cultural systems from a comparative perspective. Topics may include rituals of masculinity and femininity, the vexing question of the universality of women's subordination, culturally-specific classifications of sexual orientation and gender identity, transnational feminisms, sex work, migrant labor, reproductive rights, and much more. Usually offered every year.

ANTH 153a Writing Systems and Scribal Traditions
[ nw ss ]

Explores the ways in which writing has been conceptualized in social anthropology, linguistics and archaeology. A comparative study of various forms of visual communication, both non-glottic and glottic systems, is undertaken to better understand the nature of pristine and contemporary phonetic scripts around the world and to consider alternative models to explain their origin, prestige, and obsolescence. The course pays particular attention to the social functions of early writing systems, the linkage of literacy and political power, and the production of historical memory. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 184b Art in the Ancient World
[ djw nw ss ]

A cross-cultural and diachronic exploration of art, focusing on the communicative aspects of visual aesthetics. The survey takes a broad view of how human societies deploy images and objects to foster identities, lure into consumption, generate political propaganda, engage in ritual, render sacred propositions tangible, and chart the character of the cosmos. Usually offered every second year.

CHIN 130b China on Film: The Changes of Chinese Culture
[ hum nw ]

Taught in English. All films viewed have English subtitles.

Focuses on the enormous changes under way in Chinese society, politics, and culture. Helps students to identify and understand these fundamental transformations through a representative, exciting selection of readings and films. Usually offered every second spring.

CHIN 136b Chinese Modernism in International Context
[ hum nw ]

Taught in English.

Examines the origins, recurrences, and metamorphosis of modernistic styles and movements in twentieth-century Chinese literature, film, fine art, and intellectual discourses. Usually offered every second year.

ENG 32a 21st-Century Global Fiction: A Basic Course
[ djw hum nw oc ]

Offers an introduction to 21st-century global fiction in English. What is fiction and how does it illuminate contemporary issues such as migration, terrorism, and climate change? Authors include Zadie Smith, Amitav Ghosh, Chimamanda Adichie, Mohsin Hamid, J.M. Coetzee and others. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 52a Refugee Stories, Refugee Lives
[ deis-us djw dl hum nw oc ]

Yields 6 credits.

Examines the functions of storytelling in the refugee crisis. Its main objective is to further students' understanding of the political dimensions of storytelling. The course explores how reworking of reality enable people to question State and social structures. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 62b Contemporary African Literature, Global Perspectives
[ djw dl hum nw oc ]

What is "African" in African literature when the majority of writers are somehow removed from the African societies they portray? How do expatriate writers represent African subjectivities and cultures at the intersection of Diaspora and globalization? Who reads the works produced by these writers? Usually offered every third year.

ENG 111b Postcolonial Theory
[ djw hum wi ]

Introduces students to key concepts in postcolonial theory. Traces the consequences of European colonialism for politics, culture and literature around the world, situates these within ongoing contemporary debates, and considers the usefulness of postcolonial theory for understanding the world today. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 127a The Novel in India
[ djw hum nw ]

Survey of the novel and short story of the Indian subcontinent, their formal experiments in context of nationalism and postcolonial history. Authors may include Tagore, Anand, Manto, Desani, Narayan, Desai, Devi, Rushdie, Roy, Mistry, and Chaudhuri. Usually offered every second year.

ENG 127b Migrating Bodies, Migrating Texts
[ djw hum nw ]

Beginning with the region's representation as a tabula rasa, examines the textual and visual constructions of the Caribbean as colony, homeland, backyard, paradise, and Babylon, and how the region's migrations have prompted ideas about evolution, hedonism, imperialism, nationalism, and diaspora. Usually offered every second year.

ENG 137b Women and War
[ djw dl hum nw ]

Examines how African women writers and filmmakers use testimony to bear witness to mass violence. How do these writers resist political and sociocultural silencing systems that reduce traumatic experience to silence, denial, and terror? Usually offered every third year.

ENG 152a Indian Love Stories
[ djw dl hum nw ]

Introduces students to writings on love, desire and sexuality from ancient India to the present. Topics include ancient eroticism, love in Urdu poetry, Gandhi's sexual asceticism, colonial regulation of sexuality, Bollywood, queer fiction and more. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 170a Nigerian Movies in the World
[ hum nw ]

Introduces students to Nigeria's film industry, one of the world's largest. It focuses on both the form and the content of Nollywood films. Examines how Nollywood films project local, national, and regional issues onto global screens. Usually offered every third year.

ENG/WLIT 140b Children's Literature and Constructions of Childhood
[ hum ]

Explores whether children's literature has sought to civilize or to subvert, to moralize or to enchant, forming a bedrock for adult sensibility. Childhood reading reflects the unresolved complexity of the experience of childhood itself as well as larger cultural shifts around the globe in values and beliefs. Usually offered every third year.

FA 165a Contemporary Art
[ ca ]

After theories of power and representation and art movements of pop, minimalism, and conceptual art were established by the 1970s, artists began to create what we see in galleries today. This course addresses art at the turn of the millennium with attention to intersections of art and identity, politics, economy, and history. Usually offered every third year.

FA 166b Representing Globalism
[ ca djw nw ]

For several decades, artists have been investigating the character and consequences of life under global capitalism. Through examination of writings by artists, theorists, and historians in the context of art since the turn of the millennium, this course seeks to uncover stories of the global present and possible futures. Usually offered every third year.

FA 192a Studies in Modern and Contemporary Art
[ ca oc ]

Topics may vary from year to year; the course may be repeated for credit.

Usually offered every third year.

FREN 110a Cultural Representations
[ fl hum oc ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

A foundation course in French and Francophone culture, analyzing texts and other cultural phenomena such as film, painting, music, and politics. Usually offered every year.

FREN 125b Mediterranean Crossings
[ fl hum ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Navigating French and Francophone literature and film, we will explore the Mediterranean as a transnational space of multiple circulations, migrations, and cultural crossings in works by Lebanese, Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian, Greek, Romanian, and French writers and filmmakers. Usually offered every third year.

FREN 139a Bad Girls and Boys: Du mauvais genre
[ fl hum ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Through a selection of literary texts, articles, images and films, students will explore how works from the Middle Ages to present day depict male and female figures in the French and Francophone world who have failed to conform to expectations of their gender. Usually offered every second year.

FREN 150b French Detective Novels: Major Questions for a Minor Genre?
[ fl hum ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Examines how French and Francophone detective novels take on big questions such as the origin of evil and how do you know what you know. Authors include Fred Vargas, Simenon, Driss Chraibi, Moussa Konate. Usually offered every second year.

FREN 161a The Enigma of Being Oneself: From Du Bellay to Laferrière
[ djw fl hum wi ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Explores the relationship of identity formation and modern individualism in texts by writers working in France, Francophone Africa and Canada. Authors range from modern and contemporary writers Sarah Kofman, Dany Laferrière, Achille Mbembe, Alain Mabanckou, and Edouard Glissant to early-modern writers like Joachim Du Bellay and Michel de Montaigne. Usually offered every year.

FREN 162b From Les Confessions to Instagram: Self-Writing in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature
[ fl hum wi ]

Prerequisite: FREN 105a or FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.

Through the works of major writers, the main goal of the course will be to study the many variations of autobiographical writing that characterize contemporary French and Francophone literature, and to relate them to the renewed exploration of the post-modern subject. We will examine along the way how the self relates to the others, how it engages with filiation, memory and history - (especially World War II and the Franco-Algerian War) - and we will put an emphasis on the notions of self-fashioning and performance. Usually offered every second year.

HISP 111b Introduction to Latin American Literature and Culture
[ djw fl hum nw ]

Prerequisite: HISP 106b, or HISP 108a, or permission of the instructor.

Examines key Latin American texts of different genres (poems, short stories and excerpts from novels, chronicles, comics, screenplays, cyberfiction) and from different time periods from the conquest to modernity. This class places emphasis on problems of cultural definition and identity construction as they are elaborated in literary discourse. Identifying major themes (coloniality and emancipation, modernismo and modernity, indigenismo, hybridity and mestizaje, nationalisms, Pan-Americanism, etc.) we will trace continuities and ruptures throughout Latin American intellectual history. Usually offered every semester.

HISP 192b Latin American Global Film
[ djw hum nw oc ]

May be taught in English or Spanish.

We will study the dynamic between local and global imagination and forces in the production, circulation, and reception of films from and/or about "Latin America." Local productions, traditional topics and genres are now refashioned for international audiences. Some film directors and actors have gained mainstream global visibility; U.S.-based ‘platforms’ finance local productions for international markets. How are all these new and old images and narratives mobilized? What are all these forces and projections doing? Analysis of visual representation and film techniques will be combined with an attention to socio-cultural backgrounds. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 109b A Global History of Sport: Politics, Economy, Race and Culture
[ deis-us djw nw oc ss ]

Examines soccer, boxing, baseball, cricket and other sports to reflect on culture, politics, race, and globalization. With a focus on empire, gender, ethnicity, this course considers sport as the battleground for ideological and group contests. Usually offered every second year.

HIST/IGS 180b Modern India: From Partition to the Present
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Examines the history, culture, and economy of modern India (1947-2019) with a focus on key concerns, such as the environment, urbanization, gender/sexual relations, and the transformations of democratic politics. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 110a Religion and Secularism in French & Francophone Culture
[ hum ss ]

Tackles the persistent power of religion in France and its former colonies despite common ideals of secular nationalism. Through literature and film we will study the historical and contemporary cultural wars waged around the French notion of 'laïcité' -- its confrontation with Islam, but also the experiences of Jews, Catholics, and Protestants.

IGS 171a The Asian Wave: Global Pop Culture and its Histories
[ djw ss ]

Asia is not only remaking itself but also exporting images and ideas across the world. This course explores how Asian pop culture shapes global modernity, as countries project their values and aspirations to a global audience through increasing connectivity. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 173a Asian Gangsters: Contemporary Crime Cinema
[ djw dl ss ]

Studies contemporary crime films to examine modern Asian society and politics. Drawing upon film theory, cultural studies, historical and sociological research, this class considers the world's largest media market to understand the continent's rapidly changing socio-political milieu. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 175a Digital Asia: Democracy in the Internet Age
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Analyzes the transformative potential of the internet as an agent of development and as a mechanism for disrupting social and political orders in Asia, home to the world's largest democracy and also the world's largest authoritarian regime. Usually offered every second year.

JOUR 132b Covering the World: International Reporting and Global Affairs
[ ss ]

Explores the evolution of reporting on international affairs and other cultures for an American audience, and how the work of overseas correspondents shapes foreign policy and public opinion. It will examine the challenges facing journalists working in foreign countries and the ethical, cultural, technological, and political factors that influence the U.S. media's coverage of global affairs. Usually offered every second year.

LACLS 1a Introduction to Latin American and LatinX: Cultures, Histories, and Societies
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Provides a broad overview of the histories, cultures, and politics that continue to shape the Americas; specifically of the vast regions and populations of what came to be labeled as "Latin America," "the Caribbean" and what we now call "Latinx " populations in the USA. The class provides an introduction to Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies. It draws from different disciplines and fields of study that compose this field, such as history, anthropology, literature, visual arts, film, political science, among other perspectives and methodologies. Usually offered every year.

MUS 3b Global Soundscapes: Performing Musical Tradition Across Time and Place
[ ca nw ]

Open to all students. Required of all Cultural Studies track majors.

What are we listening to? Applies engaged listening skills and critical analysis for a deeper appreciation of (non-Western) music as a cultural expression. Focuses on particular traditions as well as social context, impact of globalization, cultural production, cultural rights, etc. Usually offered every year.

NEJS 144a Jews in the World of Islam
[ hum nw ]

Examines social and cultural history of Jewish communities in the Islamic world. Special emphasis is placed on the pre-modern Jewish communities. Usually offered every second year.

NEJS 183b Global Jewish Literature
[ hum wi ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took NEJS 171a in prior years.

Introduces important works of modern Jewish literature, graphic fiction, and film. Taking a comparative approach, it addresses major themes in contemporary Jewish culture, interrogates the "Jewishness" of the works and considers issues of language, poetics, and culture significant to Jewish identity. Usually offered every second year.

RECS 150a Russian and Soviet Cinema
[ hum ]

Open to all students. Conducted in English. Readings in English.

Examines the Russian/Soviet cinematic tradition from the silent era to today, with special attention to cultural context and visual elements. Film masterpieces directed by Bauer, Eisenstein, Vertov, Parajanov, Tarkovsky, Mikhalkov, and others. Weekly screenings. Usually offered every second year.

RECS/WLIT 136a All in the Family: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and the English Novel
[ hum ]

Selected novels and writings of Austen, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Woolf will be read to trace both the evolution of the novel and the meanings, contexts and depictions of the family. The family novel encompasses such larger questions as how we regard the pain of others and how we define community. Usually offered every second year.

REL 107a Introduction to World Religions
[ hum nw ]

An introduction to the study of religion; this core course surveys and broadly explores some of the major religions across the globe.

REL/SAS 152a Introduction to Hinduism, Yoga, and the Divine in South Asia
[ hum nw ]

Introduces Hindu practice and thought. Explores broadly the variety of forms, practices, and philosophies that have been developing from the time of the Vedas (ca. 1500 BCE) up to present day popular Hinduism practiced in both urban and rural India. Examines the relations between Hindu religion and its wider cultural, social, and political contexts, relations between the Hindu majority of India and minority traditions, and questions of Hindu identity both in India and abroad. Usually offered every second year.

SAS 100a India and Pakistan: Understanding South Asia
[ djw hum nw ss ]

Examines the making and unmaking of modern South Asia as a region, with particular focus on India and Pakistan as well as their connections to Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Using perspectives from history, politics, anthropology, literature, and film, the course introduces students to key themes in the study of South Asia, such as colonialism and anti-colonial struggles, legacies of empire, caste critique and Dalit thought, gender and sexuality, religion, and popular culture. Usually offered every year. Usually offered every year.

SAS 150b Love, Sex, and Country: Films from India
[ djw hum nw ]

A study of Hindi films made in India since 1947 with a few notable exceptions from regional film, as well as some recent films made in English. Students will read Hindi films as texts/narratives of the nation to probe the occurrence of cultural, religious, historical, political, and social themes. Usually offered every third year.

SOC 146a Mass Communication Theory
[ ss ]

An examination of key theories in mass communication, including mass culture, hegemony, the production of culture, and public sphere. Themes discussed include the nature of media effects, the role of the audience, and the extent of diversity in the mass media. Usually offered every year.

SOC 162a Intellectuals and Revolutionary Politics
[ ss ]

Can you change a society by changing its culture? How do writers, painters, and bloggers give their countries new visions of justice -- or even revenge? This class studies the ideas behind revolutions, who creates them, and why. Usually offered every second year.

WGS 5a Women, Genders, and Sexualities
[ deis-us dl oc ss ]

This interdisciplinary course introduces central concepts and topics in the field of women's, gender, and sexuality studies. Explores the position of women and other genders in diverse settings and the impact of gender as a social, cultural, and intellectual category in the United States and around the globe. Asks how gendered institutions, behaviors, and representations have been configured in the past and function in the present, and also examines the ways in which gender and sexuality intersect with many other vectors of identity and circumstance in forming human affairs. Usually offered every fall.

WLIT 100a Introduction to Global Literature
[ dl hum oc ]

Core course for COML major and minor.

What is common and what is different in literatures of different cultures and times? How do literary ideas move from one culture to another? In this course students read theoretical texts, as well as literary works from around the world. Usually offered every year.

WLIT 160a East European Literature and Film: Art and Life in the Throes of History
[ hum ]

All texts, films, and instruction in English. No prerequisites.

Examines major East European films and literary works from the Ukrainian, Polish,  Czech, Romanian, Hungarian, (former) Yugoslavian, Bosnian, and other traditions. With an eye toward the unique historical, political, and ideological currents of the region and its constituent nationalities, we will focus on both artistic expression and engagement with larger issues.  Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 55a Anthropology of Development
[ nw ss ]

Examines efforts to address global poverty that are typically labeled as "development." Privileging the perspectives of ordinary people, and looking carefully at the institutions involved in development, the course relies on ethnographic case studies that will draw students into the complexity of global inequality. Broad development themes such as public health, agriculture, the environment, democracy, poverty, and entrepreneurship will be explored. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 127a Medicine, Body, and Culture
[ djw nw ss ]

Examines main areas of inquiry in medical anthropology, including medicine as a sociocultural construct, political and economic dimensions of suffering and health, patients and healers in comparative medical systems. Usually offered every year.

ANTH 140a Human Rights in Global Perspective
[ djw ss wi ]

Explores a range of debates about human rights as a concept as well as the practice of human rights work. The human rights movement seeks the recognition of universal norms that transcend political and cultural difference while anthropology seeks to explore and analyze the great diversity of human life. To what extent can these two goals--advocating for universal norms and respecting cultural difference--be reconciled? The course examines cases from various parts of the world concerning: indigenous peoples, environment, health, gender, genocide/violence/nation-states and globalization. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 140b Critical Perspectives in Global Health
[ deis-us djw nw ss ]

What value systems and other sociocultural factors underlie global public health policy? How can anthropology shed light on debates about the best ways to improve health outcomes? This course examines issues from malaria to HIV/AIDS, from tobacco cessation to immunization. Usually offered every third year.

ANTH 142b Global Pandemics: History, Society, and Policy
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Takes a biosocial approach to pandemics like HIV/AIDS, SARS, Ebola, and COVID-19 as shaped by culture, economics, politics, and history. Discussion focuses on how gender, sexuality, religion, and folk practices shape pandemic situations. Usually offered every fourth year.

ANTH 144a The Anthropology of Gender
[ djw nw ss wi ]

Anthropology majors have priority for enrollment.

Explores gender, sexuality, and cultural systems from a comparative perspective. Topics may include rituals of masculinity and femininity, the vexing question of the universality of women's subordination, culturally-specific classifications of sexual orientation and gender identity, transnational feminisms, sex work, migrant labor, reproductive rights, and much more. Usually offered every year.

ANTH 163b Economies and Culture
[ djw nw ss ]

Prerequisite: ANTH 1a, ECON 2a, ECON 10a, or permission of the instructor.

We read in newspapers and books and hear in everyday discussion about "the economy," an identifiably separate sphere of human life with its own rules and principles and its own scholarly discipline (economics). The class starts with the premise that this "common sense" idea of the economy is only one among a number of possible perspectives on the ways people use resources to meet their basic and not-so-basic human needs. In the course, we draw on cross-cultural examples, and take a look at the cultural aspects of finance, corporations, and markets. Usually offered every second year.

ANTH 184b Art in the Ancient World
[ djw nw ss ]

A cross-cultural and diachronic exploration of art, focusing on the communicative aspects of visual aesthetics. The survey takes a broad view of how human societies deploy images and objects to foster identities, lure into consumption, generate political propaganda, engage in ritual, render sacred propositions tangible, and chart the character of the cosmos. Usually offered every second year.

BIOL 17b Conservation Biology
[ sn ]

Prerequisite: BIOL 16a or ENVS 2a.

Considers the current worldwide loss of biological diversity, causes of this loss, and methods for protecting and conserving biodiversity. Explores the science of conservation focused on the biological aspects of the problems and their solutions. Usually offered every year.

BIOL 23a Ecology
[ sn ]

Prerequisites: BIOL 16a, or a score of 5 on the AP Biology Exam, or permission of the instructor.

Illustrates the science of ecology, from individual, population, and community-level perspectives. Includes participatory science ecological research to contextualize theory. Usually offered every year.

BIOL 134b Topics in Ecology
[ oc sn ]

Prerequisites: BIOL 23a, or permission of the instructor. Topics may vary from year to year. Please consult the Course Schedule for topic and description. Course may be repeated once for credit with permission of the instructor.

Annually, a different aspect of the global biosphere is selected for analysis. In any year the focus may be on specific ecosystems (e.g., terrestrial, aquatic, tropical, arctic), populations, system modeling, restoration ecology, or other aspects of ecology. Usually offered every year.

CHEM 33a Environmental Chemistry
[ sn ]

Prerequisite: A satisfactory grade (C- or higher) in CHEM 11b or 15b or the equivalent.

The course surveys the important chemical principles and reactions that determine the balance of the molecular species in the environment and how human activity affects this balance. The class evaluates current issues of environmental concern such as ozone depletion, global warming, sustainable energy, toxic chemicals, water pollution, and green chemistry. Usually offered every year.

ECON 65b Governance, Bureaucracy, and Economic Development
[ djw ss wi ]

Prerequisite: ECON 2a or ECON 10a.

Analyzes the role of institutions, governance, and bureaucracy in economic development. Topics include transaction costs, role of institutions, governance performance indicators, causes and consequences of corruption, anti-corruption policies, principal-agent theory and bureaucratic behavior. The course also includes a detailed case study on the role of governance and bureaucratic reforms in China's economic success since 1980. Usually offered every second year.

ECON 136b Economics of Digitization
[ oc ss ]

Prerequisites: ECON 80a and ECON 184b.

Studies how technological advances fundamentally change how markets function, leading to novel firm strategies and consumer harms. Topics include: pricing digital goods, review/ratings platforms, advertising, search platforms, resale of digital goods, etc. Usually offered every year.

ECON 141b Economics of Innovation
[ ss ]

Prerequisites: ECON 80a and ECON 83a or permission of the instructor.

Studies innovation and technological change as the central focus of modern economies. Topics include the sources of growth, economics of research and development, innovation, diffusion and technology transfer, appropriability, patents, information markets, productivity, institutional innovation, and global competitiveness. Usually offered every year.

ECON 160a International Trade Theory
[ ss ]

Prerequisites: ECON 80a and ECON 83a or permission of the instructor.

Causes and consequences of international trade and factor movements. Topics include determinants of trade, effects on welfare and income distribution, trade and growth, protection, foreign investment, immigration, and preferential trading. Usually offered every year.

ECON 172b Money and Banking
[ ss wi ]

Prerequisites: ECON 82b and ECON 83a or permission of the instructor.

Examines the relationship of the financial system to real economic activity, focusing especially on banks and central banks. Topics include the monetary and payments systems; financial instruments and their pricing; the structure, management, and regulation of bank and nonbank financial intermediaries; and the design and operations of central banks in a modern economy. Usually offered every year.

ENG 52a Refugee Stories, Refugee Lives
[ deis-us djw dl hum nw oc ]

Yields 6 credits.

Examines the functions of storytelling in the refugee crisis. Its main objective is to further students' understanding of the political dimensions of storytelling. The course explores how reworking of reality enable people to question State and social structures. Usually offered every third year.

ENG 111b Postcolonial Theory
[ djw hum wi ]

Introduces students to key concepts in postcolonial theory. Traces the consequences of European colonialism for politics, culture and literature around the world, situates these within ongoing contemporary debates, and considers the usefulness of postcolonial theory for understanding the world today. Usually offered every third year.

ENVS 49a Conservation Politics
[ djw nw ss ]

Examines theories and practices of nature conservation from interdisciplinary social science and humanistic perspectives. Surveys a range of moral, political, cultural and economic dilemmas facing conservationists. Explores ways to balance competing ethical imperatives to protect biodiversity and respect human rights. Usually offered every year.

ENVS 111a Environmental and Climate Justice
[ deis-us djw ss ]

Introduces the major concepts and debates related to the unequal effects of climate change, including those of the ongoing efforts to combat climate change. We also explore several proposed programs and reforms meant to contribute to the goals of environmental and climate justice, including the social activists and movements working toward addressing social, economic, and political inequalities within ongoing efforts to address climate change. Usually offered every year.

ENVS 118b International Environmental Conflict and Cooperation
[ ss ]

Investigates environmental issues through the lens of international diplomacy from 1992 to the present day. Examines how diplomatic initiatives have—and importantly, have not—shaped the contemporary structure of international environmental relations as well as the severity of environmental threats. Usually offered every year.

HIST 52b Europe in the Modern World
[ oc ss ]

Explores European history from the Enlightenment to the present emphasizing how developments in Europe have shaped and been shaped by broader global contexts. Topics include: revolution, industrialization, political and social reforms, nationalism, imperialism, legacies of global wars, totalitarianism, and decolonization. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 56b Rethinking World History (to 1960)
[ djw nw ss ]

An introductory survey of world history, from the dawn of "civilization" to c.1960. Topics include the establishment and rivalry of political communities, the development of material life, and the historical formation of cultural identities. Usually offered every year.

HIST 109b A Global History of Sport: Politics, Economy, Race and Culture
[ deis-us djw nw oc ss ]

Examines soccer, boxing, baseball, cricket and other sports to reflect on culture, politics, race, and globalization. With a focus on empire, gender, ethnicity, this course considers sport as the battleground for ideological and group contests. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 125b Europe in the Global Cold War
[ deis-us ss ]

Offers a thematic overview of the history of the post-1945 period in Europe’s East and West, and situates these histories in their global contexts, such as decolonization, environmental change (Chornobyl catastrophe) the struggle of the USSR and the US, the Vietnam War, and debates on the “end of history” around 1989. We will study how events that started in Eastern and East-Central Europe, such as the Russian Revolution, World War II, as well as the collapse of the Soviet Union triggered political and social changes in China, Southeast Asia, and other parts of the world. Through reading diplomatic correspondence, pamphlets, memoirs and literature written by dissidents, party members, and politicians, as well as by watching and reflecting on media footage, we will examine how the Cold War and 1989 ushered in a new world order that is here with us up to the present. The course also focuses on how European states East and West rebuilt ties with the “Global South” through socialist solidarity, development aid and investments, and how the Cold War shapes the institutions and politics of the European Union up to the present. Usually offered every year.

HIST 178b Britain and India: Connected Histories
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Surveys the history of Britain and India from the rise of the East India Company to the present. Explores cultural and economic exchanges; shifts in power and phases of imperial rule; resistance and collaboration; nationalism; decolonization and partition; and postcolonial legacies. Usually offered every second year.

HIST 187b Unequal Histories: Caste, Religion, and Dissent in India
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Examines the religious, political, and social dimensions of discrimination in India. In order to study caste, power, and representation, we will look at religious texts, historical debates, film, and literature from the Vedic Age to contemporary India. Usually offered every second year.

HIST/IGS 180b Modern India: From Partition to the Present
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Examines the history, culture, and economy of modern India (1947-2019) with a focus on key concerns, such as the environment, urbanization, gender/sexual relations, and the transformations of democratic politics. Usually offered every second year.

HS 110a Labor, Work, and Inequality
[ ss ]

Examines what economic and social factors drive inequality in terms of conditions at work, from wages to discrimination to worker voice, and how these conditions are connected to business decisions, government policies, union and worker advocacy, and worker norms and beliefs. Usually offered every year.

HSSP 102a Introduction to Global Health
[ ss ]

A primer on major issues in health care in developing nations. Topics include the natural history of disease and levels of prevention; epidemiological transitions; health disparities; and determinants of health including culture, social context, and behavior. Also covers: infectious and chronic disease incidence and prevalence; the role of nutrition, education, reproductive trends, and poverty; demographic transition including aging and urbanization; the structure and financing of health systems; and the globalization of health. Usually offered every year.

HSSP 152b Introduction to Demography: Social Determinants of Health and Wellbeing
[ ss ]

Explores the social and health consequences of population dynamics within the U.S. and globally that affect wellbeing of families and nations including poverty and inequality, maternal and child health, aging, fertility and epidemiological transitions, workforce, immigration among other policy concerns. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 104a Seminar in International Order
[ oc ss wi ]

Prerequisites: IGS 8a and IGS 10A recommended.

Critically appraises the institutions known as the “international order.” We examine threats to this order and consider how it may evolve or erode with the renewed influence of rising powers and perturbations to the balance of power. Our interaction with the scholarly debate is interspersed with sessions on research methods to enable students to conduct research on related topics. Usually offered every year.

IGS 108a Seminar in Law, Justice, and Human Rights
[ djw oc ss wi ]

Explores international justice and human rights regimes along with concepts and prominent theories that inform the field. We examine specific cases carried out in different national settings and critique the utility and efficacy of international human rights institutions. Usually offered every year.

IGS 130a Crossing Borders: Mobility and Displacement in a Global Age
[ ss ]

Introduces students to the social, cultural, religious, political, and economic forces that shape global migration today. We follow migration flows across borders and assess their implications for the migrant, the state, and the global economy. Case studies include refugees and asylees whose rights are protected by international law. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 140a Styles of Globalization
[ ss wi ]

Why do some countries benefit from globalization while others lag behind? How do different nations balance issues such as free trade, foreign investment, and workers' rights? This course considers the real-world choices behind success and failure in the global economy. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 165a Revolution, Religion, and Terror: Postcolonial Histories
[ djw nw oc ss ]

Examines religious conflict, revolutionary violence, and civil war in modern South Asia. It looks at Jihad, Maoist militancy, rising fundamentalism, and political violence. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 171a The Asian Wave: Global Pop Culture and its Histories
[ djw ss ]

Asia is not only remaking itself but also exporting images and ideas across the world. This course explores how Asian pop culture shapes global modernity, as countries project their values and aspirations to a global audience through increasing connectivity. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 173a Asian Gangsters: Contemporary Crime Cinema
[ djw dl ss ]

Studies contemporary crime films to examine modern Asian society and politics. Drawing upon film theory, cultural studies, historical and sociological research, this class considers the world's largest media market to understand the continent's rapidly changing socio-political milieu. Usually offered every second year.

IGS 175a Digital Asia: Democracy in the Internet Age
[ djw dl nw oc ss ]

Analyzes the transformative potential of the internet as an agent of development and as a mechanism for disrupting social and political orders in Asia, home to the world's largest democracy and also the world's largest authoritarian regime. Usually offered every second year.

IGS/LGLS 128b Networks of Global Justice
[ ss ]

Examines how global justice is actively shaped by dynamic institutions, contested ideas, and evolving cultures. Using liberal arts methods, the course explores prospects for advancing peace and justice in a complex world. It is organized around case studies of humanitarian crises, involving health, poverty, migration, and peace-building across nations. Usually offered every third year.

LGLS 124b Comparative Law and Development
[ djw nw ss ]

Surveys legal systems across the world with special application to countries in the process of political, social, or economic transition. Examines constitutional and rule-of-law principles in the context of developing global networks. Usually offered every second year.

LGLS 125b International Law and Organizations
[ ss ]

Introduction to international law, its nature, sources, and application, for example, its role in the management of international conflicts. Topics may include international agreements, international organizations including the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, states and recognition, nationality and alien rights, territorial and maritime jurisdiction, international claims, and the laws of war and human rights. Usually offered every third year.

LGLS 129a Transitional Justice: Global Justice and Societies in Transition
[ djw ss ]

Introduces transitional justice, a set of practices that arise following a period of conflict that aim directly at confronting past violations of human rights. This course will focus on criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations, memorials, and the contributions of art and culture. Usually offered every year.

POL 129b Internet and Politics
[ dl ss ]

Prerequisite: POL 10a, POL 11b, POL 14b, or POL 15a.

Explores the effects of the Internet on politics and society. Covers issues of Internet governance and institutions, the rise of the global network economy, and the effects of the Internet on social identity. Contemporaneous events and issues such as the digital revolutions, the digital divide, fake news, and coordinated disinformation campaigns are also covered in detail. Usually offered every year.

POL 134b Seminar: The Global Migration Crisis
[ djw ss wi ]

Looks at immigration from the perspectives of policy-makers, migrants, and the groups affected by immigration in sender nations as well as destination countries. Introduces students to the history of migration policy, core concepts and facts about migration in the West, and to the theories and disagreements among immigrant scholars. Usually offered every second year.

POL 160a The War on Global Terrorism
[ dl ss ]

Intended for juniors and seniors, but open to all students.

Explores how 9/11 changed our lives. The course surveys the build-up of Al Queda leading up to the 9/11 attacks and ten years of counter terrorism. Students are given an introduction to Jihadist doctrines and Al Queda's structure, as well as theories about the cause of terrorism. Usually offered every year.

POL 184a Seminar: Global Justice
[ djw ss wi ]

Prerequisites: One course in Political Theory or Moral, Social and Political Philosophy.

Explores the development of the topic of global justice and its contents. Issues to be covered include international distributive justice, duties owed to the global poor, humanitarian intervention, the ethics of climate change, and immigration. Usually offered every second year.

REL 107a Introduction to World Religions
[ hum nw ]

An introduction to the study of religion; this core course surveys and broadly explores some of the major religions across the globe.

SOC 36b Historical and Comparative Sociology
[ dl ss ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took SOC 136b in prior years.

Explores the relationship between sociology and history through examples of scholarship from both disciplines. Using historical studies, the course pays close attention to each author's research strategy. Examines basic research questions, theoretical underpinnings and assumptions, and uses of evidence. Usually offered every third year.

SOC 127a Religion, Ethnicity, and Nationalism
[ nw oc ss ]

Examines three sources of identity that are influential in global affairs: religion, ethnicity and nationalism. Considers theories of the relationship among these identities, especially "secularization theory," then reviews historical examples such as Poland, Iran, India, and Pakistan. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 146b Nationalism and Globalization
[ ss wi ]

In an age of globalization, why does nationalism thrive? Are globalization and nationalism rivals, strangers or possibly partners? Students will trace the emergence of nationalism while also examining globalization's impact on societies such as the United States, Russia, China, and India. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 162a Intellectuals and Revolutionary Politics
[ ss ]

Can you change a society by changing its culture? How do writers, painters, and bloggers give their countries new visions of justice -- or even revenge? This class studies the ideas behind revolutions, who creates them, and why. Usually offered every second year.

SOC 168a Democracy and Inequality in Global Perspective
[ ss ]

Can democracy survive great inequalities of wealth and status? In authoritarian countries, does inequality inspire revolution or obedience? What role does culture play in determining which inequalities are tolerable and which are not? Cases usually include the United States, India, and China. Usually offered every second year.

WGS 5a Women, Genders, and Sexualities
[ deis-us dl oc ss ]

This interdisciplinary course introduces central concepts and topics in the field of women's, gender, and sexuality studies. Explores the position of women and other genders in diverse settings and the impact of gender as a social, cultural, and intellectual category in the United States and around the globe. Asks how gendered institutions, behaviors, and representations have been configured in the past and function in the present, and also examines the ways in which gender and sexuality intersect with many other vectors of identity and circumstance in forming human affairs. Usually offered every fall.

WLIT 100a Introduction to Global Literature
[ dl hum oc ]

Core course for COML major and minor.

What is common and what is different in literatures of different cultures and times? How do literary ideas move from one culture to another? In this course students read theoretical texts, as well as literary works from around the world. Usually offered every year.